2014: How Brands of Airlines in the United States Measure Up

An article was posted by me on August 20, 2013 here at The Gate with a link to a discussion on FlyerTalk suggesting that Delta Air Lines is the “least respected brand” in the United States; and although Delta Air Lines may be far from perfect as a company, I attempted to refute that claim by imparting my own personal experiences.

CoreBrand — the company responsible for the data which suggested to some FlyerTalk members that Delta Air Lines is the “least respected brand” in the United States — just released new data for the companies which they track. Solely for fun, I decided to post the results for airlines, which are shown below:

			Company	2009 Rank	2013 Rank	2014 Rank
	+2		American Airlines	178	176	174
	+7		United Airlines	202	206	199
	-1		Delta Air Lines	185	215	216
	-5		Southwest Airlines	206	251	256
	+1		US Airways Group	246	329	328

As you can see in the chart, Delta Air Lines slipped one place from 215 last year to 216 this year; but they are not the “least respected brand” pertaining to airlines based in the United States. If you believe the data from the chart above, Delta Air Lines is in the middle of the “pack”, as Southwest Airlines not only is supposedly a brand even less respected than Delta Air Lines; but is also the only other airline in the chart which performed worse this year than last year.

Curiously, however, United Airlines brand actually improved in 2014; and scored the most significant improvement of all of the airlines listed in the chart above. Try convincing FlyerTalk members of the rationale behind that statistic.

Spirit Airlines, Allegiant Air, jetBlue Airways and Sun Country Airlines are brands which are not tracked by CoreBrand; so there is no data on those companies.

Please refer to the aforementioned article for additional information at the methodology used by CoreBrand for its data and results.

Considering that there are many surveys, charts and data which suggest how an airline is ranked — whether by satisfaction with a frequent flier loyalty program or by the SkyTrax World Airline Awards of 2014 — and that there are times that the data is conflicting and seems to not be logical, I would not place too much weight on the results, which can vary.

What are your thoughts pertaining to the brands of airlines based in the United States?