AT&T and Southwest drop in Axios Harris Poll 100 reputation rankings
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Dallas-based AT&T and Southwest Airlines took a major hit in this year's Axios Harris Poll examining the reputation of the most visible brands in America.
Why it matters: Many customers disapproved of changes Southwest is making to its business model and criticized AT&T over data breaches and a widespread outage last year.
What they found: Southwest dropped 12 spots between 2024 and 2025, landing at No. 73. Delta is ranked 48th, United is 69th and Fort Worth-based American Airlines is 74th.
- AT&T dropped 16 spots, to No. 78. Verizon and T-Mobile's rankings also dropped, though AT&T had the steepest decline.
What they did: Axios and Harris Poll have partnered since 2019 to rank the reputations of companies most on the minds of Americans using a three-part framework.
Winners: Toyota Motor Corp. rose eight spots to No. 4 this year. The company has 6,600 employees at its North American headquarters in Plano.
- JPMorgan Chase, which has a regional headquarters in Plano, jumped 16 spots to take No. 21.
- Both companies are among the "fastest risers" in the 2025 rankings.
Losers: PepsiCo, which has its Frito-Lay North America headquarters in Plano, fell 20 spots to No. 42 and is among the ranking's "fastest droppers."
Between the lines: For years, Southwest had a sparkling reputation for customer service, building a famously loyal following nationwide.
- But the airline's holiday season meltdown in 2022 exposed its outdated technology, resulting in a $800 million loss and $140 million fine from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
- Now, the airline is abandoning its well-known perks and completely changing its traveler experience to boost revenue.
Meanwhile: AT&T reported two data breaches last year and had a network outage in February 2024 that left thousands of customers without service.
- The company said last year that hackers stole phone call and text message information of "nearly all of AT&T cellular customers" from May to October 2022 and on Jan. 2, 2023.
- The FCC fined AT&T $57 million for "failing to reasonably protect its customers' location information."
- After investigating the 2023 breach, the FCC concluded that AT&T should have done a better job of protecting customer data shared with vendors. The company agreed to a $13 million settlement in the 2023 case.