The Best Us Airlines For Families In 2025 Is A Long-time Player: See The Ranking

Tips for flying with kids: Advice to make your family flight easier

Learn how to have stress-free air travel with tips for flying with kids.

• AirAdvisor published a 2025 ranking of U.S. airlines based on family-friendly factors.
• The ranking considered policies like family seating, child meals and stroller check-in.
• AirAdvisor aims to highlight airlines that prioritize family needs and help families make informed travel decisions.

Families flying together often want to make sure their airline is ready to accommodate them, whether by allowing them to select seats together without paying extra, or making sure their strollers and car seats can be accommodated appropriately.

AirAdvisor, a company that aims to help passengers get compensated by airlines for cancellations and other travel disruptions, published a list of the top U.S. airlines for families in 2025. The company said it focuses on all the factors that make family travel easier.

"We didn’t just look at perks. We focused on what truly matters to families," Anton Radchenko, CEO of AirAdvisor, said in a statement. "From guaranteed seating to pre-boarding and child safety policies, our ranking highlights the airlines that genuinely support parents throughout the entire travel experience."

Here's how the major U.S. airlines stack up:

1. American Airlines
2. United Airlines
3. Delta Air Lines
4. Hawaiian Airlines
5. Alaska Airlines
6. JetBlue
7. Southwest

The survey weighed the following eight factors to generate the rankings:

• Family seating policies
• Availability of child meals
• Free stroller and car seat check-in
• Pre-boarding access for families with young children
• Entertainment systems for children
• Bassinet availability
• Child restraint rules
• Lap seat policies for infants

"Families deserve better than to be treated like an afterthought when booking air travel," Radchenko said. "Our data shows that some airlines truly prioritize family needs, while others still fall short on essentials, like simply keeping parents and children seated together. That’s the kind of gap we aim to close with this research."

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for USA TODAY. He is based in New York and you can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.