US carriers fail to make top 20 in global airline awards
Virgin America has been voted the best airline in North America in this year’s Skytrax World Airline Awards.
But the US airline was only 25th in the global top 100, with other US airlines lagging even further behind.
Instead, their Asian and Middle Eastern rivals dominated the top spots.
Dubai-based Emirates was voted the World’s Best Airline 2016, climbing from fifth place to knock off last year’s winner Qatar Airways.
It is the fourth time Emirates has won the top accolade since the airline awards were introduced 15 years ago; the airline won the first ever Skytrax World’s Best Airline in 2001, again in 2002 and in 2013.
Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, ANA and Etihad also performed well (see top 10 list below).
The awards are based on the results of the largest airline passenger satisfaction survey in the industry.
This year the results were based on 19.2 million completed surveys covering 280 airlines, by passengers from more than 104 countries.
Surveys measure quality standards across 41 performance indicators of front-line products and services in the airline industry.
Turkish Airlines was voted the Best European Airline and Lufthansa the Best in Western Europe and Best Transatlantic.
Delta Air Lines came 35th in the top 100, climbing 10 places from 2015.
United Airlines dropped down from 60 to 68, while American Airlines moved from 79 to 77.
The World’s Top 10 Airlines of 2016
1 Emirates
2 Qatar Airways
3 Singapore Airlines
4 Cathay Pacific
5 ANA All Nippon Airways
6 Etihad Airways
7 Turkish Airlines
8 EVA Air
9 Qantas Airways
10 Lufthansa
North America’s Top 10 Airlines of 2016
1 Virgin America
2 Air Canada
3 Delta Air Lines
4 Porter Airlines
5 WestJet
6 jetBlue Airways
7 Alaska Airlines
8 Southwest Airlines
9 United Airlines
10 Hawaiian Airlines
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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