virginair
Photo via Virgin America

It seems that the flying experience is increasingly spiraling into its own version of Dante’s nine layers of hell. If you travel often, you know what I mean.

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has crunched the numbers on airlines that nail their routes as efficiently as possible. The winner? Silver found that “In 2014, Virgin America was faster than its competition on 87 percent of the routes they had in common.”

Around 87 percent. He compares that the Chicago Bulls’ 1995-96 season, in which they won 88 percent of their games, “claiming the best record in NBA history.”

How did other airlines fare? Accounting for exactly where airlines fly from (Silver points out that by flying out of Honolulu, you will likely experience fewer delays than flying from O’Hare), they only compared airlines “head-to-head” on heavy competition routes.

How did the airlines do?

Silver found that our hometown carrier Alaska Airlines went  35-to-1 against Southwest. Frontier was about average with a total 144-to-47 win-loss record, but he admits that a lot of its routes are competing with poor performers United and Southwest.

Update, per a correction on FiveThirtyEight: “CORRECTION (March 13, 12:45 p.m.): A previous version of the chart in this article incorrectly listed Southwest’s record against Alaska Airlines and American Airlines. It also incorrectly listed US Airways as US Airlines.”

Check out how they all did below. And think about it the next time you have to book that ticket:

Photo via FiveThirtyEight
Photo via FiveThirtyEight
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