Originally Posted by
orbitmic
Agree with all of your post except those two small points. I genuinely don't see LH as "among the best in Europe". There are so many European airlines which I think are actually better (TK, OS, LX, AZ, SU, heck even BA is better than LH in my view). In fact regardless of the segment I look at (short, medium or long haul, Y, J, etc) I can't think of anything they do really well except apparently the F terminal and F lounge at MUC and FRA (on their F, I have no direct recent experience but have quite a few friends who use them regularly and are far from wowed despite the tasting menu, lounge notwithstanding but ok, F might be the exception).
Hmm. Let me think. Which are the European airlines for which I would turn LH down, everything else being equal. Swiss, sure. Austrian, sure on shorthaul. Aeroflot, yes on Russia-Western Europe. British Airways? Very probably, depends on class of service and route. Turkish? Probably, depending on class of service and route. Alitalia? borderline. Apparently great longhaul product, but still a mess in operations (I'd prefer a transfer on LH in MUC than on AZ in FCO). KLM? Air France? Iberia? SAS? Brussels? Aer Lingus? Nope. I'd take LH. So for me personally, LH ends up somewhere around the top 5. So, "directionally correct"
Originally Posted by
orbitmic
On the second, "the airlines people prefer" would be fine but my sense is that it is mostly "the airlines people are used to" which is not quite the same.
I agree, it's not the same. But I am not sure I understand your argument. Does it mean that larger airlines tend to score higher, after all more people are used to them? Then why do US-based carriers score badly, why are AFKL (very large) in the middle and IB (quite large as well) in the back, whilst smaller players like OS and AY more in front? Or is your point a different one, not
whom they are used to but
what they are used to/expect, the phenomenon which I call the "Zagat trap": you have some mediocre neighbour joints with high rankings because their not very demanding guests give them 3 out of 3 points "because they are always friendly", "because they always give me a free re-fill", etc; and on the other hand restaurants that are objectively better gastronomically and have high scores in the Gault Millau score lower in Zagat because in the league that they play their guests are by definition more critical?
Not sure what it is.
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This being said, I am not disputing your general point that "law of average" helping, you do get a number of correct directional tendencies (including the fact that there is nothing AF or KL are quite industry leaders at), but it is just a case of remembering that Skytrax are so imprecise about the methodology they use in particular lack of transparency in the sampling that the bias that is inherent to the study simply cannot be fully evaluated/understood.[/QUOTE]
Yep. For instance we do not know whether they normalize results. Are there more people saying that LX is great than there are people saying that Air Canada is great? Or do they normalize them against the number of pax each airline has?