On January 22, 2026 the Wall Street Journal’s annual scorecard crowned Southwest Airlines the best U.S. carrier of 2025, ending Delta’s four-year run at the top and proving that steady, competent operations still win in the real world. This isn’t about PR or pandering—this is about turning planes over, getting people to their families on time, and fixing the messes that airlines made for themselves.
Southwest’s rise wasn’t an accident; the airline poured billions into its systems, overhauled operations after the 2022–23 meltdown, and even took hard corporate medicine under pressure from an activist investor. It shrank corporate ranks, added red-eye flights to squeeze efficiency from its fleet, and began charging for checked bags — unpopular moves for sure, but they helped drive a cancellation rate of just 0.84 percent. Those are the kinds of disciplined, accountable choices private companies should make instead of whining to regulators.
The little carrier that could, Allegiant, grabbed second place by excelling in exactly the operational areas that matter: the fewest mishandled bags, the fewest involuntary bumps, and an astonishingly low cancellation rate of 0.55 percent. Allegiant’s approach is a reminder that focused, no-nonsense operations beat entitlement and bloated overhead every time. Americans who want reliability should vote with their dollars for carriers that actually deliver.
Delta, the perennial front-runner, slipped to third after a spate of late-2024 and 2025 disruptions showed that even the big names aren’t immune to sloppy IT practices and managerial complacency. The message here is clear: size and branding don’t guarantee competence, and passengers suffer when executives put optics ahead of operations. If legacy carriers want to reclaim the top, they’ll need humility and heavy investment, not more corporate theater.
Not every airline earned a gold star. American and Frontier tied for last, with American posting the highest cancellation rate at 2.2 percent and Frontier stumbling through leadership chaos after a failed merger push. United’s baggage performance was abysmal, Spirit only began to crawl back despite bankruptcy filings, and the industry as a whole still failed to crack an 80 percent on-time threshold. The WSJ’s numbers make one thing plain: mismanagement has real victims—hardworking travelers whose time and money are wasted.
Here’s the conservative takeaway: markets reward competence and punish sloth. Southwest’s climb shows what happens when a company stops playing corporate games and starts fixing problems for customers instead of press releases. Washington’s solution won’t fix missed connections or lost luggage; accountability, competition, and shareholder pressure will.
Patriotic Americans deserve airlines that respect their time and hard-earned wages. If you care about reliable travel, support companies that act like private businesses with skin in the game, and demand accountability from those that don’t — because at the end of the day, only results, not excuses, matter.
