Virgin America has been ranked the number one airline franchise for 2014, Wichita State University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University revealed in a new report, retaining its three-year position as the industry favorite.
The company received an on-time performance score of 81.5 percent for 2014, which was a decline from their 82.1 percent score for 2013. Additionally, the company's customer complaint rate of 1.14 complaints per 100,000 passengers is better than the industry average of 1.38, the report also states.
Although Virgin America performed fairly well last year, attention has been focused on the airlines which did not fare out as well as its industry competitor, which has also been attributed to changes in structure and leadership.
"Airline mergers and consolidations are taking a systemic toll that is bad for consumers," Brent Bowen, dean of the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said in the 25th Airline Quality Rating, according to Bloomberg.
"Performance by the airlines is slipping while they claimed this would make them better."
Out of the twelve airlines that were included in the report, only three of them improved their overall scores: Delta, Southwest and Hawaiian.
The 2014 rankings are as follows:
1. Virgin America
2. Hawaiian
3. Delta
4. JetBlue
5. Alaska
6. Southwest
7. American
8. Frontier
9. United
10. SkyWest
11. ExpressJet
12. Envoy/American Eagle
Virgin America was founded in 2004 and began operating in 2007.
