Originally Posted by San Gottardo

OK, understood and agreed. And it feeds directly into a point I made earlier on: when given a choice - either in a survey or where to spend their money - people make that choice based on a number of factors. These factors may be "hard and measurable vidence" , such as a lower price or own experience, and they may be fuzzy and include things like hype and prejudice. Alitalia certainly suffers from its image which reflects its past history.

But that is where marketing comes in. The ME3 and some Far Eastern airlines have managed to position themselves in people's perception as "top of the range" airlines, although the actual reality does not always support that. Alitalia has against (its own desire) established itself as unreliable and chaotic. Air France doesn't know what it wants to be, something like "better than the Asians" and at the same time "competing with LCC through MiNi" with both being a factual lie.

So this survey reflects people's preferred airlines. Fair enough. What the reasons behind those preferences are, whether they can all be backed up by hard evidence, is something even the people casting the votes do not know. But perception is reality, and it can be translated into votes and into hard currency when a choice between airlines has to be made.