Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air ranked No. 5 in the economy segment of JD Power’s 2026 North America Airline Satisfaction Study, trailing only Alaska Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Delta Air Lines and Southwest at the top.
Michael Taylor, senior managing director of travel, hospitality, retail and customer service at JD Power, said the airline has been successful as an ultralow-cost carrier compared with others like Spirit Airlines, which recently went bankrupt.
Allegiant has great operations, Taylor said, and people find it to be an easy carrier to travel on, with an onboard experience in line with what they paid for.
The schedule and locations Allegiant operates in allows it to “breathe a little bit more,” Taylor said. In order to remain a good value for customers and also ensure customer satisfaction, airlines like Allegiant also have to be intentional about the equipment they use, he noted.
“People trusted Allegiant a lot more than they trusted Spirit,” he said. “Now there’s a couple components at work there. Allegiant was flying to markets that, generally, are somewhat underserved or overlooked by the algorithms that the big airlines use to find profitable routes. So they would fly to basic locations that were close to where people want to go, including Las Vegas, and did it in a relatively cheap … way.”
Whereas Spirit was “trying to compete against the Deltas and the Uniteds of the world,” and fly into the same major destinations at a cheaper price, Allegiant is willing to fly perhaps not directly into those places — but close, Taylor said.
“They didn’t put as much pressure on themselves to operate out of these big hubs where it’s a little bit more difficult to do operations,” he said. “And so, I think that’s probably what Allegiant’s done well. And people do trust them a lot more.”
Allegiant’s flexible, demand-driven business model is unique compared with other ultralow-cost carrier models, and the airline adjusts its schedule and capacity based on seasonal travel patterns — increasing service during peak periods and reducing flying when demand is lower, according to Drew Wells, chief commercial officer for Allegiant.
“That flexibility helps us operate efficiently and continue offering competitive fares as market conditions evolve,” Wells said in a statement emailed to the Sun. “Allegiant has historically produced industry-leading results despite challenging environments, thereby proving the durability of our business model during tough times.”
Demand at Allegiant is stronger than ever, particularly among travelers looking for affordable, nonstop service to leisure destinations, and traffic to one of the airline’s largest markets — the Las Vegas Valley — is significant, Wells said.
Allegiant is the only carrier offering nonstop service on about 70% of the routes it operates, he said, and consumers can spend more time at their destination — instead of the airport — without the hassle of layovers.
“This powerful combination of low fares and nonstop access continues to resonate with customers,” Wells said in an email. “In fact, passengers consistently cite the convenience of avoiding connections and the affordability of our fares as the main reasons they choose to fly with us again and again.”
Allegiant is proud of its customer service, Wells said, and approximately 70% of the airline’s passengers are repeat customers.
Through the recent acquisition of Minneapolis-based Sun Country Airlines, Allegiant will eventually offer those customers access to expanded service, tapping into the former’s international network across Mexico, Central America, Canada and the Caribbean, Wells said.
“Ultimately, this will allow us to expand opportunities for our travelers while staying true to the values and operating philosophies that have made us successful in the past,” he said in an email.
Given Allegiant’s existing domestic route network, Wells said the airline doesn’t anticipate immediate impacts on its operations by external factors such as fuel prices and capacity constraints.
Overall satisfaction increasing
Allegiant’s strong showing came as overall satisfaction rose 8 points year over year in JD Power’s annual study, released earlier this year, with notable increases in satisfaction among passengers flying across segments.
The industry has particularly invested in the upper-class cabins, Taylor said. Airlines are doing what they can to more intentionally connect with consumers, like through credit cards that allow certain benefits, whether that be a free checked bag or access to the airline’s lounge.
“They’re building aircraft, retrofitting aircraft, to attract those people,” Taylor said. “And so we’ve seen a little bit of an uplift. That’s really why the overall survey satisfaction went up. There was some improvement in the economy class as well, just not as big.”
JetBlue Airways ranked highest in customer satisfaction in the first/business segment, Delta Air Lines ranked highest in the premium economy segment and Southwest Airlines ranked highest in economy/basic economy — despite notably changing its business model to more closely resemble its peers in the industry.
Dallas-headquartered Southwest recently ended its open seating policy for passengers and also introduced checked baggage fees. The quickest way to affect one’s satisfaction scores is to introduce fees, Taylor warned.
“They’ve gone exactly 180 degrees opposite, and they’ve done it because it does create revenue for shareholders,” Taylor said. “They’re running a business. So, although some people are sad to see that Southwest changed its business model by having assigned seating and having a bag fee, it really does mean a lot of revenue for the people at Southwest Airlines.”
The internet effect
Taylor said the survey ended just as the conflict in Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the ensuing oil crisis began.
As fuel prices rose, however, Taylor said many airlines raised bag, seating and other fees before raising airfares. That’s unusual considering the airline satisfaction survey consistently demonstrates that people do not like to be “nickeled and dimed,” he said. Abrupt fees or entirely new ones tend to be off-putting, he said.
“You do have to work quite a bit harder to get people’s satisfaction back after that happens,” he said. “Again, you get revenue. Your corporation looks better; your bottom line looks better. But people think, ‘God, you know, do they really care about me as a traveler? I used to fly with checked bags for free.’”
The internet has significantly shifted how people shop for airline tickets from even just a couple of decades ago, Taylor said.
Today, consumers often see tickets sorted by price, he said, so airlines will remove the cost of baggage, seating and early boarding from their ticket fares in order to appear higher on their search results, and then charge for such amenities separately.
“And it turns out that, actually, you can make more money charging a standard bag fee, than figuring out how much it would cost you to carry that bag in the hold of the aircraft and roll that cost into the airfare itself,” Taylor said.