It just dawned on me that this thread is begging the Skytrax problem; not the one that we suspect there is some funny business going on behind the scenes, but the fact that very few of us have the ability to provide a comprehensive comparison because very few of us have flown on enough of these airlines to make an informed universal judgement, even if subjective.

As such, I'm thinking a good way to create a list would be to ask people for simple A v. B comparisons, and compile the resulting data. Otherwise, it's just a popularity contest (e.g. people will tell you that CX is the best just because their other reference points are crappy airlines).