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U.S. Airlines are often criticized, especially their international business and first class products, compared to Asian and Middle Eastern competitors such as Singapore Airlines, JAL, ANA, Emirates, and Qatar Airways.
But even if we only look at U.S. airlines, there's one in particular that's a strong contender for worst U.S. airline: American Airlines. Here's why we avoid it, as do many of our clients:
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American Airlines: Poor On-Time Arrival Performance
Let's look at on-time arrivals for the most recent reported month, July 2025. American Airlines was 13th, at 62.4% on-time arrivals, worse than every other carrier except Frontier Airlines, and over ten percentage points lower than the top performing major airline, Delta Air Lines:
- Hawaiian Airlines: 78.9%
- Skywest Airlines: 73.9%
- Delta Air Lines: 73.7%
- Spirit Airlines: 73.4%
- Envoy Air: 71.7%
- Southwest Airlines: 69.9%
- Allegiant Air: 69.3%
- United Airlines: 67.9%
- Alaska Airlines: 67.6%
- Republic Airways: 66%
- PSA Airlines: 63.9%
- Jetblue Airways: 62.5%
- American Airlines: 62.4%
- Frontier Airlines: 62%
More recently, a look at Flight Aware's live delay and cancellation statistics reveals that yesterday, 10/19/25, 31% of American Airlines were delayed (vs. 22% for United and 24% for Delta) and the day before, 10/18, 30% of AA flights were delayed (vs. 27% for United and 16% for Delta).
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American Airlines: More Flight Cancellations
Also for July 2025, American Airlines cancelled the most flights of any U.S. airline: 2959 flights. That's in absolute terms but even on a percentage basis, American was 11th, at 3.4% of flights cancelled, a greater percentage than all other airlines apart from JetBlue, PSA Airlines, and Republic Airways, and more than double the percentage that Delta cancelled:
- Allegiant Air: 0.4%
- Hawaiian Airlines: 0.7%
- Southwest Airlines: 1.3%
- Skywest Airlines: 1.4%
- Delta Air Lines: 1.4%
- United Airlines: 1.7%
- Spirit Airlines: 1.9%
- Alaska Airlines: 2.2%
- Envoy Air: 2.3%
- Frontier Airlines: 2.9%
- American Airlines: 3.4%
- JetBlue Airways: 5.0%
- PSA Airlines: 7.1%
- Republic Airways: 9.0%
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More American Airlines Passengers Suffer Involuntary Denied Boarding
While a relatively small number of passengers are involuntarily denied boarding, American Airlines again stands out–and not in a good way–in this area as well. Virtually all airlines overbook flights, expecting that some passengers will no show or won't make their connection. They do this in order to ensure that they fill flights, and view the compensation they pay to passengers who voluntarily agree to accept it as a cost of doing business.
During the three months of April to June 2025, Delta Air Lines had NO passengers that it involuntarily denied boarding to, because Delta's practice is to offer attractive enough compensation that passengers voluntarily take a different flight. United Airlines had 37 passengers involuntarily denied boarding to, Alaska Airlines had 36, JetBlue had 40. But American Airlines involuntarily denied boarding to 2026 passengers. That tells you a lot about the airline's service culture, or lack thereof.
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American Airlines: Lowest Customer Satisfaction Score
In light of all the above, it's perhaps unsurprising that in a recent survey of international airlines, American Airlines ranked lowest in customer satisfaction, with a passenger experience score of 2.9/10, worse than low cost carriers (LCCs) such as Ryanair and Frontier Airlines.
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If you've flown American Airlines recently, what was your experience?
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