WSJ ranked JetBlue last in its 2021 U.S. airline survey

JetBlue usually gets some pretty good press. However, the airline got the wrong end of the stick recently and some rare negative publicity when it ranked last in an operational performance survey of nine major US airlines last year.

The Wall Street Journal ranked the nine airlines across seven criteria in their now annual airline scorecard. Delta Air Lines came first. But ingloriously bringing up the rear and lagging after ultra-low-cost carriers like Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines was JetBlue.

Last year, American Airlines came last for the second year in a row. This year, American did better, coming equal sixth with Frontier Airlines. JetBlue came seventh last year.

The survey ranks carriers according to their on-time arrival rates, canceled flights, extreme delays, two-hour-plus apron delays, mishandled baggage, involuntary bumping, and complaints. Airlines are ranked across each metric, and the best performing overall airline takes home the gong.

The WSJ acknowledged it wasn’t an ordinary year of flying for the US carriers. In addition to the ongoing impact of COVID-19, crew shortages, an unusually high number of weather events, and some IT wipeouts adversely affected most airlines.

As its ninth placing suggests, JetBlue wasn’t unaffected last year. However, JetBlue dodged much of the bad publicity that so often bugged bigger airlines like Southwest, American, and United.