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Turkish Airlines fleet at Istanbul Airport: "Best European airline" was the verdict of the passengers
Photo: Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto / Getty Images
How satisfied are you with your airline?
This question was answered by 13.42 million passengers, the result of the survey: Qatar Airways, Qatar's national airline, took first place in the "World Airline Awards" ranking by the British market research institute Skytrax again this year - for the seventh time.
In time for the soccer World Cup, which will take place in the emirate from the end of November - which is very controversial.
Skytrax has been determining the most popular airlines in general every year since 1999 - with the exception of a corona break in 2020, but also divided into categories such as the most popular crews or the best on-board program.
This time the survey was conducted among customers from more than a hundred countries and included more than 350 airlines.
They could vote between September 2021 and August 2022.
"Qatar Airways has been the largest airline to fly continuously during the COVID-19 pandemic, never dropping below 30 destinations," Skytrax's Edward Plaisted said at the awards ceremony at London's Langham Hotel.
Second place also went to a favorite from last year: Singapore Airlines.
Emirates rose to third and Japan's ANA fell to fourth.
Turkish Airlines in particular worked its way up, rising from 17th place in the previous year to 7th place;
Air France also gained two places and is now in ninth place;
Swiss was the only one in the Lufthansa Group to make it into the top ten, in tenth place - and improved by a total of eight places.
However, the top ten is still dominated by Asian and Arabian airlines.
Lufthansa, which was ninth in 2019, came in 15th this time - overtaken by Turkish Airlines, which also won the award for the best airline in Europe.
The subsidiary Eurowings made it to 63rd place and won the award for the best low-cost airline in Germany.
Among the low-cost airlines, Ryanair has also climbed from 57th to 40th place (Europe's best low-cost airline award) and Easyjet has slipped from 50th to 55th place.
North America's top airline became Delta Air Lines;
in Eastern Europe Air Baltic from Latvia took the title and was included in the ranking for the first time in 2022.
The Greek Aegean Airlines took home the award for Europe's top regional airline.
While there weren't as many changes in the top ten, the top 40 is different: Skytrax attributes the shifts "in part to differing operating levels among some airlines due to ongoing Covid-19 restrictions during the period of the customer survey." .
China's borders remained closed due to the Covid-Zero policy, which has enabled very few international flights in the past 2.5 years.
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Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines are also ahead in the other categories, each winning nine awards.
According to the passengers surveyed, the latter had the best cabin crew in the world, as in the previous year.
Asian airlines dominate in this category - only Qatar Airways is the only non-Asian airline in the top ten.
In the “World's Cleanest Airline” category – important during a global pandemic – All Nippon Airways (ANA) won, followed by Singapore Airlines and Japan Airlines (JAL) in second and third place.
On the other hand, customers felt they were being best entertained by Emirates, United Airlines and Qatar Airways – these airlines landed on the podium for the »World's Best Inflight Entertainment«.
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