expat network

World’s Best Airlines And Airports

airlines
Airhelp, the air passenger rights company has announced the results of its 2018 evaluation of the world’s airlines and airports. Airhelp rates the airlines and airports on quality of service, on-time performance, claims processing and online consumer sentiment.

Airlines

Qatar Airways tops the list of airlines beating Singapore Airlines, last year’s winner. This was achieved with improvements in on-time performance and claims processing. Singapore Airlines continues to have the highest score for quality of service, but drops to 4th overall this year.

Lufthansa is in second place, matching Qatar Airlines on customer service, but was let down by a modest record in on-time performance. Etihad in third place scored well on quality of service, marginally behind Qatar and Lufthansa and had good on-time performance, but did not score as well for claims processing. South African Airways rounded out the top five.

The highest placed UK airline was Virgin Atlantic in 10th place followed by Flybe in 14th. There were no US airlines in the top 20 with American Airlines coming in 23rd. With 72 airlines ranked, United Airlines at 37 and Delta at 47 were both in the bottom half of airlines.

The airlines with the lowest ratings include Air Mauritius, easyJet, Pakistan International Airlines, Royal Jordanian Airlines and WOW Air. Ukraine International Airlines achieved the lowest score for quality of service by a significant margin, but were rescued by one of the highest ratings for on-time performance and a good score for claims processing.

 

Airports

Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar, heads the list of airports with high scores for on-time performance and quality of service, but with a lower score in customer sentiment. Athens International Airport and Tokyo Haneda International Airport are ranked second and third.

London Heathrow comes in at 80th as the highest ranked UK airport. Birmingham (96) and Bristol (99) are the only other UK airports in the top 100 with Gatwick coming in at 123. London Stansted came 140th out of 141 beating only Kuwait International Airport.

Seattle-Tacoma (34) and San Francisco International (46) were the only US based airports in the top 50 and overall only six were ranked in the top 50%. Newark Liberty International was in the bottom 10%.