AT&T and Southwest drop in Axios Harris Poll 100 reputation rankings
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But the airline's holiday season meltdown in 2022 exposed its outdated technology, resulting in a $800 million loss and $140 million fine from the U.S. Department of Transportation.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.
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