Press Release: Allegiant Travel Company Schedules Fourth Quarter And Full-Year 2025 Earnings Call

By Dawn Gilbertson and Allison Pohle

You would be forgiven for thinking no airline deserves a crown for 2025. Maybe your flight was canceled during the government shutdown, bad weather wrecked your vacation plans or you sat on the tarmac because of a shortage of air-traffic controllers.

Hurdles big and small are de rigueur for airlines, unfortunately, and there were some high ones to clear last year. United's chief financial officer this week likened the industry's 2025 to being hit with multiple asteroids. What separated the winners and losers was how they handled what was thrown at them. (Or caused by them!)

And the best airline is...

In 2025, the clear winner was Southwest Airlines. The largest U.S. domestic carrier by passengers took first place in The Wall Street Journal's 18th annual airline scorecard for the first time since 2020. After finishing second to Delta in a photo finish for 2024's rankings, Southwest this time won by a wide margin, and ended Delta's four-year winning streak.

Budget carrier Allegiant came in second, followed by Delta in third.

In our ratings basement: American and Frontier, which tied for last place. It was a return trip for Frontier.

We rank nine major U.S. airlines on seven equally weighted operations metrics: on-time arrivals, flight cancellations, delays of 45 minutes or more, baggage handling, tarmac delays, involuntary bumping and what the Transportation Department calls passenger submissions (which are mostly complaints). We excluded Hawaiian Airlines because of its regional focus, but its results will be included in merger partner Alaska's ranking for 2026.

How Southwest did it

Southwest didn't best rivals in every category but had high showings across the board. The Dallas-based airline had the fewest customer complaints and tarmac delays, and was second best in on-time arrivals and the rate of canceled flights. Its worst finish was fourth, for baggage handling.

In short, its operation hummed. This despite industry challenges and sweeping internal changes spurred by an activist investor. The airline that long eschewed layoffs, even during the Covid-19 pandemic, cut its corporate workforce 15% in February. It started red-eye flights to get more use out of its planes. In May, Southwest started charging for checked luggage and experienced a surge in the volume of carry-on bags.

Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson says the airline has spent billions on its operation since its holiday-travel meltdown in late 2022 and early 2023. And it kept working on ways to improve after losing to Delta by one point in the 2024 rankings.

Watterson says he is particularly proud of Southwest's low cancellation rate, which requires coordination among the airline's control center, crew-scheduling team and airport stations when delays are unfolding. The carrier's cancellation rate in 2025 again came in below 1%, at just 0.84%. Only tiny Allegiant fared better, at 0.55%. Fellow Texas carrier American canceled 2.2% of its flights, more than any airline in our scorecard.

"It's very easy to cancel a flight. That's the path of least resistance, " Watterson says.

Allegiant shined in three categories to nab second place. In addition to the lowest cancellation rate, Allegiant mishandled the fewest bags and involuntarily bumped the fewest passengers. It was far from perfect, though, with relatively low rankings in on-time arrivals, and extreme delays.

The airline says its delays are more severe because it doesn't offer daily service on most routes. Delaying flights helps avoid flight cancellations that can strand passengers, Allegiant says.

Perennial winner Delta was tops in on-time arrivals again but landed in third place overall because of an increase in flight cancellations, tarmac delays and submissions to the Transportation Department. We knew the latter was coming: Delta's summer 2024 meltdown after a CrowdStrike tech outage wasn't fully reflected in the 2024 rankings, because the data only ran through May of that year. Data since then shows a surge in submissions, a proxy for complaints, in July and August 2024.

Delta vows to return to the top spot in 2026. "Delta people set the bar high for airline performance as part of our drive for continuous improvement," the airline says.

A bad year for American and Frontier

American and Frontier no doubt were happy to say goodbye to 2025.

Both had serious reliability problems, not to mention outside issues. Early in the year, an Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines regional jet, killing 67 people. Frontier's second bid for struggling Spirit Airlines was rejected in February and its longtime chief executive was suddenly replaced in December.

American rarely shines in our rankings, but 2025 was particularly ugly. Its cancellation rate went from 1.37% in 2024 to the chart-topping 2.2%. The highest it ranked in any category was sixth out of the nine airlines, for extreme delays.

The airline blamed its poor performance in part on weather and other disruptions outside its control at several of its hubs. It says better times are ahead for passengers, a familiar refrain.

"Our investments in key areas, including baggage handling and historic increases in block time, are already yielding very promising improvements for our operation and importantly, our customers," the airline says.

Frontier ranked last in four of the seven categories. Its best showing was third place, in mishandled bags. The airline declined to comment.

Inside the rankings

Here are five more standout findings from our 2025 airline scorecard:

• Déjà vu: Overall, airlines performed about the same as they did the prior year, without any sharp improvements or declines. The industry averages for cancellations, bags lost and bumping were essentially flat compared with in 2024.
• Down but not out? Spirit Airlines last year filed for bankruptcy for the second time, and is fighting for survival. Yet it managed to climb to fifth place in our rankings, from eighth in 2024, making it the most improved airline. Spirit's cancellation rate was 1.42%, down from 1.88% in 2024, when it was the worst in the category. It jumped from seventh place to fourth in on-time arrivals.
• United in bag misery. United and other airlines rave about their bag-tracking technology but that was little solace to United passengers in 2025. The airline had the worst showing among the nine airlines in our survey, with a mishandled-bag rate of 7.07 per 1,000. The industry average was 5.11. JetBlue, which ranked second after Allegiant in this category, came in at 3.06.
• Steep descent: They are only one spot apart but there is a 12-point gulf in the overall score between fourth-place finisher Alaska and fifth-place Spirit. And nine points separate seventh-place JetBlue and last-place finishers American and Frontier.
• Grading on a curve: No airline in our rankings cracked the 80% threshold for on-time arrivals. (Delta, the only carrier to do so in 2024, came the closest, at 79.1%.) The industry average was 76.45%, down slightly from 77.65% last year. That's a C+ in most households. And keep in mind that the government's definition of on-time is generous: within 15 minutes of schedule.

Write to Dawn Gilbertson at dawn.gilbertson@wsj.com and Allison Pohle at allison.pohle@wsj.com