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Alaska Airlines has unseated Virgin America, the airline it recently acquired, to take the top spot in the just-released 2017 Airline Quality Rating.
Delta finished a close second, according to the 27th annual study of U.S. airlines.
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The report found the airline industry overall improved in four key areas: on-time performance, rate of involuntary denied boardings, rate of mishandled bags and customer complaints.
Going from fifth to first place, Alaska was one of nine airlines to improve in 2016. The others were American, Delta, ExpressJet, Frontier, SkyWest, Southwest, Spirit and United.
On the other hand, scores declined for Hawaiian, JetBlue and Virgin America, which was last year’s top airline.
On-time arrival percentage was 81.4% in 2016 compared to 79.9% in 2015.
Involuntary denied boardings per passenger served by the industry improved to 0.62 per 10,000 passengers in 2016 from 0.76 per 10,000 passengers in 2015.
Mishandled baggage rate was better, decreasing to 2.70 per 1,000 passengers in 2016. It was 3.24 per 1,000 passengers in 2015.
The consumer complaint rate declined to 1.52 per 100,000 passengers in 2016 from 1.90 per 100,000 passengers in 2015.
Alaska, the top airline, saw performance improvement in two of the four areas tracked. Its on-time arrival performance increased by about 1%, and the rate of mishandled baggage was cut by 50%.
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