Flexible preferences

Skytrax can't be trusted. To follow on from UKTravelbear's point, here's what the Advertising Standards Authority said:

"Five issues were investigated, all of which were Upheld."

"1. the claims "Checked and trusted airline reviews" and "REAL travellers with REAL opinions!" were misleading and could be substantiated, because they understood that Skytrax did not verify the reviews on their website and therefore could not prove that they were genuine;

2. the claim "More than 5 million independent, traveller reviews and customer trip ratings" was misleading and could be substantiated;

3. the claim "Official Quality Star Ranking(TM)" was misleading, because it suggested that the ranking system was official and not the advertiser's own creation;

4. the claim "The Star Ranking programme operates in a real-time analysis format, to ensure that Airline Star Ranking levels are constantly maintained and adjusted in accordance with changes made by an airline, be this to product or service standards - on average, each airline's Star Ranking is reviewed in depth every 2-3 months, and adjusted in accordance with the annual ratings" was misleading and could be substantiated, because they understood that the website continued to display rankings for airlines which were no longer in business; and

5. the claim "TRADEMARK(TM) PROTECTION - The titles below are protected by Skytrax, and can only be used by a Registered 5-Star Airline with consent of Skytrax" and accompanying list were misleading, because they did not believe that those titles were trademarked."

ahmetdouas

Have you guys even read the recent reviews by people?
Really doesn't make good reading!

http://www.airlinequality.com/airlin...itish-airways/

review titles from the first page are:

"from bad to worse"
"ba going to the dogs"
"service on ba really is terrible"
"im sticking with them" - this one is a positive review!
"are not a 4 star airline"
"deteriorating service recently"
"a total disappointment"
"this service is a joke"
"won the race to the bottom"
"very evident cost cutting"

Andriyko

No one argues that negative experiences happen. It is how often they happen and how likely you are to actually have them is what matters. When some one posts on FT that they had no food in CE and everyone starts saying that BA is the worst and pathetic and it is unacceptable and the thread runs into a hundred pages, one can get an impression that BA does not normally feed passengers in CE. In fact, reading this forum one may get an impression that BA often does not do many things, and that the likelihood of having a broken seat, or no choice (or complete lack of) food or non-working washroom is 99%. This is not true of course. If people want a 100% fail proof operation and cannot accept that things happen - on all airlines - then I don't take that seriously. In over 17 years of flying BA there have been 2 occasions when no food was loaded in CE (once for the entire cabin, and once they said it was for me because I was upgraded or bought my ticket late - something that was not true anyway), and yet I don't have an impression or expectation that BA won't have any food for me in CE because I know that it happens vary rarely. So, no I will not base my opinion of an airline based on 50-100 angry and frustrated people who think that everything must always go smoothly and no disruptions or service failures can happen...ever. I'd rather make up my mind based on years of flying with the airline and having different experiences with it rather than read someone's single bad experience.

I was downgraded and separated from my luggage by AA for 4 or 5 days - I did not run to Skytrax or over to the AA forum to bash AA as I knew that it would be extremely unlikely for people to experience the same, and there was no reason to 'warn' people not to fly AA based on my single bad experience. When I share reviews on Tripadvisor, for example, I do it after I have stayed at the property a few times to make sure that the experience I am sharing has been consistent.

Yes, it's as if the same people were writing posts here and reviews there...:-)

Ten reviews do not make it the absolute truth for thousands/millions of other passengers. I, for one, do not recognize the airline that I fly in many reviews there.

headingwest

It's been like that for a few months now. It really kicked off from around mid-January. I wonder why that might be!?

navylad

Indeed, you can understand why people would want to write negative reviews when they are annoyed by a Service change and more likely to notice negatives they wouldn't have done so otherwise; if that Service change isn't important to you then can you rely on those reviews?

And indeed, accommodation is a different kettle of fish with he greater variation even within the large chains; i am far more likely to need to check a review if I've not stayed somewhere before and even then I would take recommendations from friends and colleagues over the reviews.

Flexible preferences

Yes, people angry about BoB and getting their revenge perhaps? @:-)

(never mind if they are impartial or not, hey...)

LCY8737

Why is everybody getting so excited about this? A 3 star rating is neither terrible nor great, but merely average. Which is exactly what comes to mind when I think about BA.

headingwest

You really think that people have been writing these reviews for 5 months to get revenge!?

BA = ostrich management

Flexible preferences

May I ask, what did you mean when you said:

?

355F1

Charging a fee to select a seat on a paid business class long-haul flight is absolutely despicable.

Andriyko

I am genuinely interested why some take these rankings seriously (including airlines) and quote them. I've for long believed that people are much likelier to post a negative review to vent their anger or dissatisfaction then make an effort to post about a positive experience. This makes the results skewed.

Some members here have probably taken more BA flights than the number of reviews there and their opinion of what can be expected of BA most of the time will have more statistical value than Skytrax reviews. (But it is good to know that only 20 people were annoyed with BoB enough to go to Skytrax and make an announcement about it).

Flexible preferences

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sl1ppy

Whatever the intricacies of the rating system, can't disagree , BA nowadays is at best average.
I'd say slightly below, due to the meal choices in J, all too frequently becomes an embarrassment for the crew,

headingwest

Well, BA management are taking a bit of a risk, aren't they? Maybe they believe that all these reviews on Skytrax and elsewhere are just unhappy people (Flyertalkers?) who have nothing better to do than write up negative reviews in order to get revenge.

But the fact of the matter is, in a few week;s time they're going to enter one of the busiest (the busiest?) periods of the year when, probably, the majority of their passengers will get to see what they now offer. This period will likely change many peoples' view of the BA product and influence future bookings.

The reviews could of course be fabricated and might not be worth tuppence, but if it were me I certainly wouldn't want to take the risk.

IAMORGAN

Ok but are BA fliers more likely to express dissatisfaction than JAL or Cathay fliers? You'd have thought if the ratings are disproportionately negative, that would hold true across all major airlines?