Notwithstanding significant consolidation in their ranks, the U.S. legacy carriers remain firmly ensconced in the mid-range of the mainlineetwork carrier category in this year's Top-Performing Airlines (TPA) rankings. Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines ranks in the top five in the low-costiche category, and Alaska Airlines—which a number of observers would categorize as more of an LCC than a legacy—is in third place overall in the mainlineetwork category. Once, the U.S. legacies were the envy of the rest of the airline world; now, in terms of performance as measured by the TPA process, they achieve only a middling rank. They are bested handily by a carrier that did not exist until the 1970s, and another that was confined largely to serving a single U.S. state and connecting it with the nearest point in the "lower 48" (Seattle) until fairly recent times.
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