Friday, Aug 29, 2008
What is Salon readers' favorite airline? Hint: It's not one of the big three U.S. carriers.
May 7, 2004 | Before proceeding, I'd like to share the following e-mail. It illustrates a point -- a disclaimer almost -- fairly essential to my next few columns, in which your choices of best and worst airlines are revealed after three weeks of voting. Like all of the letters to be excerpted, it has been edited for clarity.
"It's not the airline itself. Every flight is different. I see no consistency on any airline, and I fly often: Air France, Air New Zealand, Varig, Thai, Alitalia, United, Continental, British Airways. They all can be good, or even great. Yet any can also be a desperately uncomfortable experience."
I'm equally pleased and surprised that my survey elicited fewer vindictive tirades than expected. Reports of pleasant experiences arrived evenly with the inevitable rants and horror stories. In total, slightly more votes were cast for best airline than for worst.
Obviously the poll was not scientific, but we must have done something right, since the overall results are a close match with those of the industry's respected pollsters. It took SkyTrax 10 million opinions to decide which was the world's top carrier. We managed to pick the same airline with 500.
What came in, mainly, were impressions and observations from casual, semiregular travelers. I'm comfortable with that. A majority of people, let's remember, are not hardcore frequent fliers, and lasting opinions, good and bad, are often hard-forged through single encounters. For an airline, pleasing the twice-a-year vacationer is perhaps no less consequential than pleasing -- or pissing off -- that million-mile regular in first class. In a forest-for-the-trees folly, carriers tend to bend over backward for their favorite clients, assuming theirs is the better gauge of quality. If I were in charge, I'd probably choose a less jaded demographic as my bellwether. No doubt I'm standing on its head some basic tenet of economics 101 here, in my idealized notion of management. But I'd do it anyway.
Winners are based on raw total scores, with votes for and against canceling each other out. I'd intended to allow negatives and positives to stand in separate tallies, but over time this seemed less and less fair. "Sadly," expressed an e-mailer from California, "I have to vote Southwest Airlines for both best and worst." Southwest as the top and bottom finisher simultaneously? For a while it was shaping up that way, and that's something we're just not ready for, emotionally.
Salon Readers Choice for Favorite Airline, and winner of the prestigious Ask the Pilot Round of Applause:
Singapore Airlines
If you have a map handy, please notice that the city-state of Singapore rests 8,000 miles from the West Coast of the United States. Granted this column has its share of foreign readers (Kazakhstan, would you believe?), but that Singapore Airlines, which presently calls port in a total of four North American destinations, should draw more ballots than American, United, Delta, et al., is astounding. It was also the only airline, domestic or foreign, to receive a unanimous score.
"No need to comment for anybody who has ever flown this airline. You're overwhelmed by comfort and politeness. And Changi Airport is a blast."
"Last year some friends flew Singapore to Thailand on their honeymoon. When they came back, did they show us photos of blue water and white sands? No, they showed us the amazing menu from Singapore Airlines first class. They talked of how the crew opened two different bottles of $200 champagne, and how they were given new robes to wear for each leg of the flight!"
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