Traveling In 2018? Here's A Ranking Of 2017's Top Airlines

As much as we love traveling, and are always saving up for a bucket list trip, actually getting there can kind be the worst. Sometimes the key to not flipping out on an innocent airport employee, or weeping out of frustration over your Cinnabon, is picking the right airline. Unfortunately, to do that you have to make a decision about what terrible mishap is the lesser of the evils. For instance, would you rather lose your luggage or sit on the tarmac for hours? Tough choice, we know. The good news is, once you decide, The Wall Street Journal has ranked eight major airlines on how often customers experienced these many inconveniences. The results can help you choose which airline to book with next time you fly.

If you decide you absolutely cannot handle your flight being canceled, you might want to opt for flying Frontier, which had the least number of canceled flights in 2017. Spirit, on the other hand, had the most. Unfortunately, those two airlines switched places in the category of mishandled baggage. Spirit mishandled baggage the least last year, while Frontier did it the most. See what we mean about air travel presenting one complicated choice after another?

For those who feel that there is nothing worse in the entire world than their flight being delayed, consider staying away from American, and instead book with Southwest. If it's important for you to get where you're on time, make a note in your travel notebook that Delta is the way to go. Delta's 2017 track record for on-time arrivals was the best, while JetBlue's was the worst.

If it's too much for you to weigh the costs and benefits of each possible inconvenience you could face during air travel, we get it, especially since everything could still end up going wrong on any airline you choose. That's why the WSJ also reported an overall ranking. In this category, Delta got the top spot, followed in second place by Alaska Airlines/Virgin America. The airline with the overall lowest ranking in 2017 was, perhaps surprisingly, JetBlue. As far as air travel goes, that single ranking is pretty much as simple as it gets.