World's Best Airlines

What's the world's best airline, according to World Airline Awards, which is published by Skytrax? It's certainly not any U.S. airlines. They traded quality for cheap price and have achieved the lowest fares, but at the expense of comfort. In these days only state financed, not private, airlines can afford the garish extravagance demanded by fliers who can afford the higher priced fares.  And the winner and runner ups are No. 2 Singapore Airlines and No. 3 All Nippon Airways (ANA), last year's winner Emirate Air, with Cathay Pacific rounded out the top five of the ratings.  All are loss leader airlines that are government owned with profit secondary to promoting their country's tourism.

Qatar Air is terrorism affected by a U.S. ban on large carry-on electronics that was put into effect after the latest rash of terrorist murders. This puts it at a passenger experience disadvantage against competitors unaffected by the ban, but the government a can add more luxury perks on board to make up for some of the loss due to the ban. Still, Qatar and nearby Middle East nations are feuding over terrorism. This has forced Qatar Air to no longer offer flights to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others. Also those other Mid East nations  have closed off their air spaces to flights from Qatar.

Air Canada took the title for “Best Airline in North America.” That's great for a privately owned airline, but don't cheer for Canada. Overall, Air Canada finished 29th in the ratings. Delta was the top ranked U.S. carrier in the World Airline Awards, placing  three spots behind Air Canada at 32nd overall. The Skytrax awards are one of several annual consumer rated rankings for air travel. Travel + Leisure magazine's ratings, perhaps even more valued by the airline industry released it's ratings late in the summer. Singapore Airlines was last year's world's top carrier in that list. Emirates was the runner-up in those ratings while Qatar Airways place third.

But the question that has to be asked is whether those winners are really the favorites. More people fly the low fare airlines than any other, and those who answered the surveys rating the world's best tend to be full fare, high fare fliers. That is a subjective question with now correct answer. Still, I am sure those of us who love the cheap fares and hate the lousy service on those airlines, would like to see improvement in the latter, even if it meat a modest fare increase.

Skytrax's annual airline passenger satisfaction survey produced 19.87 million eligible survey entries for this year's results. The survey period stretched from August 2016 through May 2017 and included participation from travelers of 105 nationalities. More than 325 airlines were included in the survey. So it was a survey that included many fliers. The top 25 of the Skytrax rankings were:

1. Qatar Airways 
2. Singapore Airlines
3. All Nippon Airways
4. Emirates
5. Cathay Pacific
6. Eva Air
7. Lufthansa 
8, Eitihad Airways
9. Hainan Airlines
10. Garuda Indonesia
11. Thai Airways
12. Turkish Airlines
13. Virgin Australia
14. Swiss International Air Lines
15. Qantas Airways
16. Japan Airlines (JAL)
17. Austrian Airlines
18. Air France
19. Air New Zealand
20. Asiana Airlines
21. Bangkok Airways
22. KLM
23. China Southern
24. Hong Kong Airlines
25. Finnair