As we live in Australia and travel via Asia to the UK and US, we’ve flown with most of the airlines on both lists. When we can help it, we’re much more likely to fly with the right-hand column airlines, of which Singapore is definitely our favourite (although we haven’t flown with Qatar).
On our most recent flight to the UK, we flew with Virgin rather than our more usual Singapore, and it was a much less comfortable flight overall. This was due not to the staff, who were absolutely doing their best, but the infrastructure, including cramped seats and poor food. We also had the odd experience of only being offered the “Western” meals, not Asian dishes, which was very annoying once we worked it out.
You note Japan Airlines as an outlier: from my own experience, they also have good service, so I wonder if they ranked just below the top ten comfort airlines.
A deliberately budget airline like Southwest is never going to make the top ten in comfort.
The general trend in Australasian airlines at the moment is for a major carrier to split off a budget airline, e.g. Qantas and Jetstar, or Singapore and their upcoming offshoot. That’s probably driving prices down over all, but maintaining a high standard with the major carriers.
As we live in Australia and travel via Asia to the UK and US, we’ve flown with most of the airlines on both lists. When we can help it, we’re much more likely to fly with the right-hand column airlines, of which Singapore is definitely our favourite (although we haven’t flown with Qatar).
On our most recent flight to the UK, we flew with Virgin rather than our more usual Singapore, and it was a much less comfortable flight overall. This was due not to the staff, who were absolutely doing their best, but the infrastructure, including cramped seats and poor food. We also had the odd experience of only being offered the “Western” meals, not Asian dishes, which was very annoying once we worked it out.
You note Japan Airlines as an outlier: from my own experience, they also have good service, so I wonder if they ranked just below the top ten comfort airlines.
A deliberately budget airline like Southwest is never going to make the top ten in comfort.
The general trend in Australasian airlines at the moment is for a major carrier to split off a budget airline, e.g. Qantas and Jetstar, or Singapore and their upcoming offshoot. That’s probably driving prices down over all, but maintaining a high standard with the major carriers.