Plan B Forum

Qantas has again dropped out of the world's top 10 airlines, while Cathay Pacific has been named the world's best carrier in the annual World Airline Awards.

Cathay Pacific climbed from sixth place last year to displace 2013's top airline, Qatar Airways.

Announced at the Farnborough International Air Show in the UK, the World Airline Awards, run by research firm Skytrax, are one of the most high-profile in the aviation industry.

Cathay Pacific Chief Executive Ivan Chu said that he was "extremely proud, for both Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong" to receive the award.

Cathay becomes the first airline to win the award four times, having previously taken the title in 2003, 2005 and 2009. The airline has spent $HK4.9 billion ($A670 million) revamping its aircraft cabins over the past four years.

Asian and Middle Eastern airlines dominated the top 10 as always, but two European airlines also made the list, with Turkish Airlines climbing to number 5 from number 9 last year, and German carrier Lufthansa rounding out the top 10.

Qantas meanwhile, dropped back to 11th place from 10th last year. This is the second time Qantas has fallen outside the top 10, falling back to 15th place in 2012. The airline peaked in 2008, when it was ranked the 3rd best in the world.

There was better news for Qantas in the awards by region, where it was named the best airline in the Australia/Pacific category, ahead of Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand and Jetstar.

Qantas executive Olivia Wirth said the regional win was especially satisfying given the level of competition.

Garuda Indonesia took out the award for the best cabin crew, ahead of Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines.

Singapore Airlines won the award for best first class cabin, Qatar for best business class and Korea's Asiana for best economy class cabin.

Among budget airlines, AirAsia and offshoot AirAsia X took out the top two spots, with Jetstar ranked fourth best.

The Skytrax awards are based on a survey of 18.85 million airline passengers from around the world. Passengers from more than 160 countries participated in the latest survey, which covered 245 airlines worldwide.

The awards are not without controversy. Last month, Etihad Airways announced it would withdraw from the awards, citing unhappiness with Skytrax's rating system.

However, the airline still ranked 9th in this year's results, after Skytrax declared that an airline could not withdraw from the rankings as the results were decided by customers.

"An airline cannot be withdrawn from the World Airline Awards, since these results are directly decided by customers. Skytrax do not exercise control over which airlines are nominated in the survey ratings, and to subsequently try and conceal the results of a public vote would be unacceptable," Skytrax said in a statement.

Click on the links below to read our reviews of the top airlines.

World's top 10 airlines
1. Cathay Pacific Airways (Flight test review)

2. Qatar Airways (Flight test)

3. Singapore Airlines (Flight test)

4. Emirates (Flight test)

5. Turkish Airlines

6. ANA All Nippon Airways

7. Garuda Indonesia (Flight test)

8. Asiana Airlines

9. Etihad Airways (Flight test)

10. Lufthansa

Best inflight entertainment
1. Emirates

2. Singapore Airlines

3. Turkish Airlines

4. Qantas (Flight test)

5. Cathay Pacific Airways

6. Virgin Atlantic

7. Qatar Airways

8. Air New Zealand (Flight test)

9. Virgin Australia (Flight test)

10. Etihad Airways

Best cabin crew
1. Garuda Indonesia

2. Cathay Pacific

3. Singapore Airlines

4. Asiana Airlines

5. Malaysia Airlines (Flight test)

6. Qatar Airways

7. EVA Air

8. ANA All Nippon Airways

9. Thai Airways (Flight test)

10. Hainan Airlines

Source: worldairlineawards.com



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/traveller- ... z37ayR3nNv

if it's not a bad experience, I'm happy. Sadly, this is what flying has become.

Guinevere wrote: I generally fly Southwest, for domestic travel. I think their fares are the most reasonable, I despise paying for checked baggage, and I've never had a problem with their service or personnel. They do try to make travel fun -- as fun as it can be these days.

OK BigRR, I'm sending you back in time to Howard Hughes and the era of the glamorous air trip. Just be prepared for it to take a damn long time to get anywhere.

Guinevere wrote: The Greyhound of air travel? Not really, their facilities are way way nicer than most bus stations, and buses.

Eventually the queue started forming for our second flight. So we joined it. Looking around at the other people I got the impression that some, most even, had been spending their roubles in the Shanghai Xmas sales, and had forgotten to check in their boxes of purchases at the luggage check in.

Amazingly all the Ruskies we had seen, which seemed to be mainly middle-aged male gangsters and incredibly beautiful seven foot tall gangsters molls, were not toting their luggage up the wrong aisle, this was their hand luggage! I couldn’t believe my eyes, each person had more in hand luggage than we had as our total luggage for our five week holiday. I fully expected to see people bring live goats and boxes of chickens onto the plane. There were a few raised voices when this lot was being stowed I’ll tell you. Though as the raised voices were all Russian it sounded like a shouting contest in reverse speech.

Adding to this impression was the plane itself. It was an aging Tupolev, it was like stepping back in time to about 1978. There was no seat back TV screens, just TVs at the ends of each aisle. The air-hostesses looked like the Russian shot putting team from the 1956 Olympics. Oh boy, ten hours of this! Fun and games to look forward to then.

On take off the landing gear had some difficulty retracting, and when it finally made it into the hold there was a massive "THUD!" which we felt through our seats. Not exactly reassuring.

The first incident of the flight happened when a fat guy tried reclining his seat, and ended up with his head on Hatch’s lap. To be fair he did apologise profusely, in fluent Russian, and kept his seat near vertical for the rest of the trip. Then the TV ”entertainment” fired up. I found it hard to believe that the first offering was “Home Alone” dubbed in Russian. "Home Alone" wasn’t even funny in 1990. Luckily the tape snapped. Yes, the tape. It was on whatever the Ruskie version of VHS tape is. And it fucking snapped.

Then they showed a Russian (melo)drama about some woman who robbed the bank she was working at in order to keep her boyfriend screwing her. Or at least that’s my interpretation of it, it may have been Dostoyevsky’s critique of Western capitalism for all I know. It was a couple of hours/days long, and featured some blonde, or at least badly dyed peroxide blonde, who spent her screen time staring into space wistfully, while it snowed. We then had some prehistoric Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Following this they switched the TVs off, and turned all the lights out. Nighty night kiddies!

I was woken buy a shot putter thrusting a red hot tin tray into my hand. It contained a fruit omelet for breakfast. I ate it, and wished I hadn’t. Luckily I had some zucchini balls left so I ate those too.

“Ooh look it’s snowing,” said Hatch pointing out of the window. “Snowing” is too delicate a word for what was happening outside, it was a blizzard. Then I remembered the noise the landing gear had made, shit! I didn’t mention this to the two girls, though Hen definitely gave me a; “So the flights were cheap then eh?” look.

With another hollow, bone numbing, thud, the landing gear went down, much gripping of seat arms was engendered. We landed sideways, the plane turned left, then right, then back left, and skidded to a halt. I have never been thrown about so much on a landing, or been so glad to be on the deck. The round of applause the pilot got from all and sundry was truly heartfelt.

Moscow customs was a doddle, no one really seemed to give a fuck. We walked miles to the new terminal F. There I bought some Vodka, a litre and a half of it, for the equivalent of $4.00 Au. I noticed that everything was priced in Roubles or Euros, and vowed to come armed with armfuls of Euro on the return trip.