Traveling by airplane can be a stressful situation. Choosing the correct airline can make all the difference. Check out how your favorite airline scores on the 2013 Airline Scorecard; Ranking of Major Carriers in Key Operational Areas, Best to Worst infographic and article from The Wall Street Journal. 

In the Middle Seat’s annual scorecard of airline service, tracking seven different key measures of airline performance, Alaska Airlines performed best in 2013 among major carriers. At the top with Alaska was Delta, which for the past two years has posted far better operational results than big competitors. Worst among big airlines? United Airlines and American Airlines, again. 

By assigning each airline a specific color, it allows the viewer to clearly distinguish each airline throughout the scorecard. The lines connecting the columns also gives the whole graphic a sense of connectivity and flow, causing the eye to follow each airline.

Even though this visualization is part of a larger article, they did a good job of including the relevant information in the image file itself.  This is a big help when the scorecard image gets shared online.  It has a clear title, data sources and credit to the WSJ.  The URL back to the article would be very helpful, but they didn’t include that in the image.

Found on http://ilovecharts.tumblr.com