Consumer Reports is Southwest Airlines award honors

 Southwest Airlines earned top honors in the list of the reports of consumer ratings of the airline, which has also appointed seats poor comfort and added costs as major recriminations for travellers.

The ranking released Tuesday, was based on a survey of close to 15 000 readers. In the survey, readers reported their experiences on domestic flights, round-trip 29,720 more than a year.

Respondents assessed at each stage of their journey on the following criteria: Check-in facility, cabin crew service, cleanliness of the cabin, baggage handling, comfort of seats and in-flight entertainment. Among the results:

-Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways ranked first and second in customer satisfaction.

-Best ranked Southwest in the ease of check-in and cabin crew service, but won low marks for in-flight entertainment. Only JetBlue received a positive score of in-flight entertainment.

-JetBlue is also the only company to receive positive points in each of the categories above.

--93 percent of Southwest passengers were charged no fee for registration. More than half of American, Delta, JetBlue and continental passengers has also paid no fees. Comparison, more than 40 per cent of US Airways, Alaska, Frontier and AirTran paid a passenger tax.

-US Airways, United Airlines, Delta Airlines and American Airlines has received mediocre to negative ranks in each of the categories above.