Qatar Airways named 'best in the world'
The supremacy of Middle East and Asian airlines has been underlined by the world’s top airlines awards for 2017.
Qatar Airways, part-owner of British Airways, takes the top spot in the Skytrax awards, with its Gulf rivals Emirates and Etihad in sixth and eighth place respectively.
Six Asian airlines make the top 10: Singapore Airlines, All Nippon of Japan, Cathay Pacific, Eva Air of Taiwan, Hainan Airlines of China and Garuda Indonesia.
Once again, Lufthansa is the only European carrier in the top 10, taking seventh place.
The top-ranked UK carrier is Virgin Atlantic, in 33rd place — one below its part-owner, Delta, which is the highest ranked US airline.
Airlines that are ahead of the UK’s best carrier include Norwegian and Aeroflot of Russia.
British Airways, whose holding company IAG is one-fifth owned by Qatar Airways, has slipped from 26th to 40th position. BA has been criticised for removing complimentary catering from short-haul economy flights, and for its programme of "densification": packing more passengers into the same size plane. It is now one place ahead of easyJet, which slipped three positions.
Asian airlines picked up many of the specialist awards, including best cabin crew (Garuda Indonesia), best economy class (Thai Airways) and cleanest cabins (Eva Air).
The Gulf airlines picked up key individual awards. Emirates was rated as providing the best inflight entertainment; Qatar Airways won best business class; and Etihad was rated the best first class.
Qatar Airways is currently banned from flying to the bases of its rivals, Abu Dhabi and Doha, as well as to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain.
Thomson Airways, which slipped one place to 66th, was still rated “world’s best leisure airline”.
The most improved airline in the list is Ryanair, which rose from 108th to 76th place. If the Irish no-frills carrier continues the same trajectory, it will be best in the world within three years.
