With the latest Airline Ranking review in progress, we receive countless e-mails asking why one particular airline deserves a 5 Star ranking - or other rating category. The question is poignant when one views the ranking for the airlines, and realise that none of them achieve top tier levels for their Economy cabin standards - seating in particular being an item where none of the above achieve near the top quality rating.

Surely "straight" 5's are required ?

No. Were that the case, we would effectively not be able to create a 5 Star listing within the industry.

There are some airlines with excellent Premium product / service standards - others with higher quality Economy cabin standards, but these do not meet in terms of achieving a straight set of 5 Star rankings.

Then there are those airlines where the product levels may not reach 5 Star status - but staff service quality is up at the 5 Star level. The central factor of staff service achieves a very high Quality ranking.

Thus, the Ranking Agenda requires a careful balance of the different items under evaluation.

Is every ranking item shown ?

No. We have tried to extract some "key" points used for an airline's Star Ranking, and used these to illustrate each airline's Ranking page.

The actual Ranking Agenda covers several hundred different areas of product and service, and the results of each Ranking is available only to the individual airline.

What about the nationality bias ?

This is not an issue, although there will always be some who insist that one nationality achieves a better service standard than others.

In particular, we find that some US citizens are critical of lower rankings applied to American carriers, and appear to have a much higher perception of their countries airline standards when contrasted with say a European or Asian passenger.

However, when assessing service and product quality, the first approach is centred on the "international" style applied, and this is then tempered with the way other nationalities are handled - how does an Arabic customer with different expectations to say a Texan passenger, perceive the final standards of product and service delivered.

There can be great strength in retaining the "national" identity and core values for each airline - but only if this is retained in such a way that a truly international, and more tolerant approach can be applied.