Shares of American Airlines and Alaska Airlines diverged Thursday following their earnings results. American Airlines topped Q4 views, but tumbled on its outlook. Alaska Air surged following its report.

Air New Zealand, which flies one of the longest regularly scheduled routes on the entire planet, took the top award, handed out by AirlineRatings.com. The Kiwi carrier serves Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, from New York’s JFK Airport — a distance of 8,828 miles. The trip takes 16 hours and 15 minutes.

A new year means new resolutions, new opportunities and, importantly for travelers, new flights. Hawaii trips are set to get a bit easier at Southwest Airlines. Greenland will get what may be its first U.S. nonstop on United Airlines. And a newly beefed-up Alaska Airlines is launching flights to Tokyo and Seoul.

Alaska Airlines' merger with Hawaiian Airlines aims to enhance connectivity and drive earnings growth through strategic initiatives in 2025.

There’s been enough drama in the past year to knock U.S. airlines off their game. An Alaska Airlines blowout grounded dozens of planes. There was a failed JetBlue-Spirt merger and Spirit’s bankruptcy.

Alaska Airlines is the only United States-based carrier that was in AirlineRatings' top 10—although Hawaiian, American, Delta and United were in the top 25.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Midwest has done a decent job of taking care of travelers' items, with major airports in Kansas City, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Denver ranked among the top six for the least complaints per 100,000 passengers.

Fort Lauderdale is no stranger to long routes. In fact, the flight from LAX is one of the top seven longest flights out of the airport. Other destinations include Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

American said it was anticipating higher costs driven by lower capacity and expensive labor contracts to dampen its first-quarter outlook.

A majority of airlines will declare a bag lost between five and 14 days after the flight, according to the DOT, One constant found by the research team is that the larger the airline, the worse the luggage service was in 2024.

Allegiant Air had the lowest mishandled baggage rate overall but saw a 46.2% spike year over year, data show. In contrast, JetBlue Airways saw the biggest improvement in baggage handling, falling 34.8% from 0.56 mishandled bags per 100 bags enplaned in 2023 to 0.36 in 2024, according to Upgraded Points.

Alaska Air Group (NYSE:ALK) flew higher in early trading on Thursday after the airline company topped estimates with revenue growth of 38.4% year-over-year in Q4 to $3.53 billion. Capacity was up 2.5% during the quarter,