As the Thanksgiving and Christmas travel seasons approach, millions of Americans are getting ready to fly.
The familiar complaints about delays, poor food, and cramped seating have been highlighted in a recent global ranking of airlines.
Researchers at The Daily Telegraph – a British newspaper – evaluated 90 major airlines, assessing factors like in-flight experience, luggage policies, reliability, and connectivity.
American carriers were slammed. Frontier, Allegiant and Spirit made up three of the spaces in the bottom four.
And not a single US airline made it into the top 20. Highest placed was Alaska at 23 and Delta a place lower. American and United were beaten by Ethiopian.
Scroll down for the complete list.
Frontier was ranked as the worst American airline and came in 89th out of 90 overall
Only Eastern European airline Wizz – known for dire service – is ranked worse than Frontier, Allegiant and Spirit
Read More
Southwest Airlines makes huge change to its controversial seating policy
Spirit Airlines ranked 87 out of 90 scoring an extremely low 15 points for in-flight experience, 55 for reliability, just 40 for luggage rules and 26 for connectivity.
The budget airline, notorious for delays and lack of creature comforts, is reportedly in discussions with its bondholders about the terms of a potential bankruptcy filing.
Spirit is struggling with losses and declining revenue amid coming maturities within its $3.3billion debt load – including more than $1.1billion of secured bonds that are due in less than a year.
It also faces an October 21 deadline from its credit card processor to refinance or extend those notes.
Allegiant came in just one point lower and ranked 88th.
The budget airline scored better than Spirit for in-flight experience, totally 35 points, but lower with 50 for reliability, 20 for luggage rules an 31 for connectivity.
The worst ranked American airlines was Frontier Airlines which scored a very low 285 points overall, bringing it in to 89th place.
The airline scored 15 for in-flight experience, 53 for reliability, 20 for luggage rules and 27 for connectivity.
Frontier has faced negative headlines in recent months, with flight attendants threatening a strike over a new business model that means they return to their destination of origin every day.
Put into effect in April, the new model is meant to prevent delays and cancellations, as well as save the airline $200million this year.
‘US airlines’ reputation for treating passengers as self-loading freight is confirmed,’ the Telegraph wrote in its analysis.
Delta was down in 24th place in the detailed study by The Telegraph, a newspaper from the UK
Although no American airline broke the top 20, Alaska and Delta did rank much better at 23rd and 24th place respectively.
JetBlue and Southwest also returned decent scores, and were recommended for being among still offering free tea and coffee.
The overall winner was Emirates which was ranked best for in-flight experience and praised for its extravagant customer service touches, such as a chauffeur to drive Business class passengers to and from the airport.
It was also ranked highly for its connectivity, having networks between 140 cities in 77 countries.