Best airline

The World's Best Airline in 2011 was announced by Skytrax which has the largest airline and airport review and ranking site.

According to their announcement, Qatar Airways won the coveted title of  the World's Best Airline.  Ranked No 1 in the world, Qatar Airways surpassed the 2008 winner Singapore Airlines into 2nd place, with Asiana Airlines (Best Airline in 2010) in 3rd position. Cathay Pacific Airway and Thai Airways International came in fourth and fifth, respectively. Etihad Airways, Air New Zealand, Qantas Airways, Turkish Airlines and Emirates fill out the top 10 list..

The winners are voted by more than 18.8 million airline passengers from 100 different nationalities over 10 months.

The World's Best Airlines 2011

1 Qatar Airways(UAE)

2 Singapore Airlines

3 Asiana Airlines(Korea)

4 Cathay Pacific Airways(Hong Kong)

5 Thai Airways International

6 Etihad Airways(UAE)

7 Air New Zealand

8 Qantas Airways(Australia)

9 Turkish Airlines

10 Emirates(UAE)

I was surprised that there were no Western and Japanese airlines.

Most of airlines come from Middle East and Asia.

It is easy to explain the reason. UAE buy newest airplane one after another by using their oil money and they hire a lot of good staffs from all over the world. Surprisingly, cabin attendant job is not popular among these countries, because UAE airline hire cabin attendants as migrant workers from foreign countries. Asian countries are also in the good economy situation and they don't need to conduct the cost down like Japanese airlines.

As for Japanese airlines, it was not good result except ANA won the 1st place in staff service in Asia area.

I expected that Japanese airlines at least ranked in best ten.

They seem to suffer from bad economy after the recession. So they couldn't renew their aircraft and couldn't give nicer service and reasonable price compared to best ten airlines.

Looking at this ranking, I think in airline world, even newcomer can get good ranking result if they can buy new aircraft and hire good staffs.

As the costumer point of view, this ranking is really meaningful, because, it would be good situation that there are a lot of competitors and cause the competition principle.

I talked with ANA cabin attendant about this topic when I went to Japan on business trip 2 weeks ago and she said this ranking has a big influence and we pay attention to this result.

However, as for customers, it's sure that the domestic airlines are the best in language and cultural back ground.

For instance, for Japanese people, even though the seats are really comfortable, they can't enjoy the flight without Japanese movies. Also, Japanese people prefer Japanese food.

With these in mind, it seems like there are a lot of airlines and customers can choose from many options but, as a matter of fact, there is no choice. As you know, there are only two main airlines such as JAL and ANA.

As for Japanese customer point of view, I hope that other new Japanese airlines join the market and develop through friendly competition with their original service. There are a lot of ideas for a way to differentiate themselves such as safety, cabin comfort, meal, entertainment, hospitality, mileage service and price.

However, don't forget that safety is always first.

http://www.worldairlineawards.com/