I feel like you must have a specific use case for which AirDrop fails more often.

I use AirDrop all the time for various things, and it mostly works as expected. It almost always works correctly when it's transferring between two of my own devices; the only issue I think I regularly encounter is when airdropping to another person's device. But I do not AirDrop particularly large files, so perhaps something goes wrong there.

That said, among average users, AirDrop is pretty consistently considered to be a great feature. I witness this occasionally in-person, but also in online discussions.