It's that time of year again. The Airfarewatchdog team has been hard at work crunching numbers to determine the best domestic airlines. (In case you missed last year's rankings, you can see them here.) We took a look at performance in five key areas—canceled flights, on-time arrivals, mishandled bags, denied boardings, and customer satisfaction—to determine the best of the best in 2013.

Top Airlines for Overall Performance*

Frontier

1st Place

&nbspVirgin America 

2nd Place

JetBlue

3rd Place

Alaska

4th Place

Southwest

5th Place

Delta

6th Place

AirTran

7th Place

US Airways

8th Place

American

9th Place

United

&nbsp10th Place 

*Rankings determined by combining the airlines' scores in all categories

Individual Categories

Fewest Cancelled Flights*

&nbspVirgin America 

0.16% Cancelled

Frontier

0.29% Cancelled

Delta

0.42% Cancelled

Alaska

0.43% Cancelled

JetBlue

0.74% Cancelled

Southwest

0.78% Cancelled

United

1.27% Cancelled

US Airways

1.39% Cancelled

American

1.42% Cancelled

AirTran

&nbsp1.52% Cancelled 

*Based on Department of Transportation (DOT) report on June 2013 flight cancellations at all reportable airports

On-Time Arrivals*

Alaska

&nbsp87.5% On-Time 

Frontier

77.9% On-Time

Delta

76.1% On-Time

US Airways

73.0% On-Time

Southwest

72.5% On-Time

United

71.1% On-Time

&nbspVirgin America 

70.6% On-Time

American

69.8% On-Time

JetBlue

69.6% On-Time

AirTran

65.9% On-Time

*Based on DOT report on June 2013 on-time arrivals at all reportable airports

Fewest Mishandled Bags*

 Virgin America 

0.95 Mishandled

JetBlue

2.14 Mishandled

Frontier

2.19 Mishandled

Delta

2.78 Mishandled

US Airways

3.09 Mishandled

Alaska

3.50 Mishandled

American

3.59 Mishandled

United

4.06 Mishandled

Southwest

4.23 Mishandled

AirTran

 5.19 Mishandled 

*Based on DOT report on June 2013 mishandled baggage reports per 1K passengers

 Amount of Denied Boardings* 

JetBlue

2 Denied

Virgin America

7 Denied

Alaska

32 Denied

American

33 Denied

US Airways

66 Denied

Delta

86 Denied

United

93 Denied

AirTran

136 Denied

Frontier

138 Denied

Southwest

148 Denied

*Based on DOT report on April to June 2013 involuntary denied boardings per 1MM passengers

 Customer Satisfaction Score* 

JetBlue

83

AirTran

81

Southwest

81

Virgin America

72

Alaska

72

Frontier

72

Delta

68

American

65

US Airways

64

United

62

*Based on June 2013 American Consumer Survey Index scores

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