America's Best (and Worst) Airlines

For the second year in a row, the Airline Quality Rating (AQR) report has ranked Virgin America as the highest-quality major airline in the United States. The AQR has been conducted annually since 1991 and is considered the premier statistical study of US major airline performance. It focuses on four criteria: On-time arrivals, denied boardings, mishandled bags, and customer complaints. The final ranking is a weighted average of the four scores. Here they are:

I haven't risen all of the carriers, but I see that my least favorite (American Eagle) landed at the bottom of the list. No surprise there, at least not for me. An airline that's missing from the list is Spirit Airlines, which a recent Planet Money episode labeled the "The Fastest Growing, Least Popular Airline In America." If that report is correct, it would've almost certainly landed below American Eagle, which in my opinion is very hard to do.