Originally Posted by
orbitmic
IMHO the "success" of LH overall and in most individual categories is totally undeserved and the rankings largely echo flyers' partial knowledge and prejudices
Oh, it's like a presidential or parliamentary election then: people have only partial knowledge about the real issues and vote based on prejudices
My personal reactions are twofold: if I do indeed take individual rankings I am surprised to see LH so far up. And I am surprised about EK and QR to be so high in the rankings. Whether or not and by how big a margin they
really are "better" than SQ or ANA is a different matter.
But then, as I said in my OP, if I look at whether results are "directionally" correct, I actually do find them OK. Emirates and QR are clearly top 10 airlines, and so are SQ and CX. Turkish and Lufthansa clearly are
among the best in Europe.
And then let's not forget one thing: partial knowledge indeed plays a role. For instance, if few people fly Air France Premiere and therefore know little about the Premiere lounge and do not know about it being fantastic, that also reflects on AF's poor overall perception and their inability to attract enough people to their Premiere product.
And: airlines are basically consumer products. So "hype" can be created, and that hype is reflected in people's opinions and therefore also in these surveys.
But in the end, if people choose to fly one airline over another and make that airline successful it hardly matters how much is hype, how much is "hard facts", how much is prejudice, how much is the result of patriotism or captive markets, etc. In the end they still do and that is what makes it to the P&L.
The entire survey would be less attackable if it wasn't called "The world's best airlines" - suggesting that these are absolute truths - but "the airlines people prefer". Big difference, the most popular isn't necessarily the best. Very similar to a presidential or parliamentary election (just ask the French).