Your favourite Airline

[Pete McCluskey.]

I have just finished a couple of long haul flights and travelled on the following airlines, Qantas, Air France, Alitalia and Luthansa.

I know you will say I am biased but in terms of service from the cabin crew, quality of food and comfort of seats Qantas was way ahead.

The worst? Alitalia...Sorry Paolo.

So which is your favourite Airline and which is the worst, and why?

 

[domtoni]

Pete,

Much of my flying experience has come from long haul flights.
Some are better than others.

I found (in business class) JAL was excellent - 777 with seats that fold flat. Both western and Japanese food.
KLM's service is satisfactory, and the older 747 has semi - reclining seats.
BA has always been good and with the 777s, they offer the same comfort as JAL.
I liked the food on Air France, Lufthansa and SAS and find the service to be good.
Alitalia has always been a problem. I guess that is why they loose money.

If you fly a 747, the seats and room are no where near as nice as in a 777. I am not a big fan of Airbus craft on long haul flights.

For economy class, and flights to the good old US of A, I like American and United. Reasons - the seats and the room. Food is pretty average.
I don't like (again seat room) Air Linguas,Continental, BMI.

Ciao
Dom

 

[hoppy]

Emirates are certainly better than Qantas for hospitality,food and inflight entertainment.

 

[Paolo-LoveGT40 Modelworks]

I have just finished a couple of long haul flights and travelled on the following airlines, Qantas, Air France, Alitalia and Luthansa.

I know you will say I am biased but in terms of service from the cabin crew, quality of food and comfort of seats Qantas was way ahead.

The worst? Alitalia...Sorry Paolo.

So which is your favourite Airline and which is the worst, and why?

U do not have absolutely to be sorry my friend.
here we all wellknow that OFFICIAL airline is really crap! (and we always try avoid that..preferring also the ugly quality Ryan air...because anyway cheaper and better for short european travels).
The company is compltely gone and in July they will (try) sell all,but is nearly impossible to find a real buyer for too many reason.
Alitalia has the typical italian governament problems impossible to solve, as some old pilots (not flying) earning 30.000 euros monthly and too young ones waiting monthly earn since 3 months (1000 euros..).
Another too interesting reality (ALL our big company are this way guys..) is that main alitalia management is done by people incapable to do his job, earning also 50.000 euros MONTHLY and not really doing ANYTHING for the company.
They also have a special office...of 8 people in Rome, working ONLY about the names to give to airplanes (u see an md80...ok lets call that "firenze"...this is THE job. .)
All italian BIG companies are this way. ALL !! (Fiat, telecom, Pirelli,...)

We wellknow this,we want this fashionable unuseful crappy company will close REALLY soon (and not be sold to italian govern..the risk is this),and we just hope we can have a serious italian flying company as in the past we had.

Pete,u was anyway lucky ....the REAL terrific one is another italian company named "Meridiana".

For all the love of this world..NEVER use it,too better travel by feet then use theme, believe me.

 

[Paolo-LoveGT40 Modelworks]

btw, my favourite one is SAS scandinavian,flying too clean and new airplanes,nearly always in time...and hating Milano Linate airport cause we made them to have the worst european plane crash of the history (almost 100 people die for our stupidity and usual italian mess..)

 

[David Morton]

Paolo,
I agree with Pete - Alitalia is just so bad it's unbeleivable. Just a small point - 'terrific' translates to 'prima' or 'bella' - 'terror' or 'scary' would be more appropriate.
It's really difficult for me to be subjective as I invariably never travel in IIIrd world or cattle class but I do listen to my neighbours, many of who jet all over the world, and the reports are that Virgin have a good product. I did travel Qantas on one of their 747 Longreach aeroplanes into Sydney and it was as Pete said, superb. Emirates is also highly rated.
In my time I flew with Maersk Air out of Copenhagen and Stockholm and for safety for flying into difficult airports (Innsbruck, Varga, and Funchal etc.,) they were the tops.
Singapore airlines is also up there with the cream of the crop.
Lastly, BA mainline and longhaul always has to be my choice - all the time though I'm told the crews are working very hard compared with my time there.

Cut price airlines - Easy, Ryan, and so on cannot be compared at all. You get what you pay for. They had a route from Verona (Brescia) to Frankfurt return for €1 plus taxes in 2003. The coffee and a kit kat on board costs more.
Dave M

 

[David Morton]

Paolo, You are correct about Linate. It's criminal and an accident always waiting to happen. I made a cat 3 landing there and asked prior to approach if everything was working satisfactory. After I landed, in the usual Po valley fog, I could not see where to leave the runway and taxi to the gate so I asked for radar assistance. " we have no radar working".
They sent a 'Stop-follow me' truck out to find me and he got lost as well. I think I closed the runway for about 20 minutes.

 

[Fred W Ballinger]

Only really bad experience I have had is with OLYMPIC airlines.
In 2005 I took up the offer of some cheap tickets and planned a trip to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. From here that meat a 2 hour local flight, a 5 hour wait, an 12 hour international flight, a 2 hour wait, another 2 hour flight, a 2 hour car ride, a 1.5 hour train trip and a taxi ride to look forward to before I got there.
Would you believe that once I got to a stop over in Athens, Air Olympic decided to go on strike and cancel my onward flight. I had to buy another two tickets to fly with air Lufthansa via Frankfurt, to get to Heathrow, which messed up the onward travel arrangements. Total travel time Port Elizabeth to Chichester was 40 hours!
But the nightmare trip was worth it - Spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday there, plus had negotiated with the wife that she spend the weekend on a Greek island, so I could do the petrol head thing unencumbered.
Cheers
Fred W B

 

[Scott Calabro]

The best airline is the Corporate Jet !!

GULFSTREAM 550 !!

Seriously though, in my experience I have to agree with Pete, QUANTAS wins.

They have the best maintenance of ANY airline.

Best,
S

 

[Paolo-LoveGT40 Modelworks]

Paolo, You are correct about Linate. It's criminal and an accident always waiting to happen. I made a cat 3 landing there and asked prior to approach if everything was working satisfactory. After I landed, in the usual Po valley fog, I could not see where to leave the runway and taxi to the gate so I asked for radar assistance. " we have no radar working".
They sent a 'Stop-follow me' truck out to find me and he got lost as well. I think I closed the runway for about 20 minutes.

I well remember that day in November.Everybody was talking about terrorist attack in Linate, and that was only the logical ending of such mess we always have there.
I dunno only how those sad things dont happen everyday there.
Note they actually have a too modern radar...but they never started to use it (and the radar today is damaged by dust..).
Nobody knows why this happens,probably for some mafia agreements or politic mess.
The most sad thing in all this is that today the managment of Linate airport nearly deny such tragedy happened there.

Similar mess in Fiumicino (Roma), renamed by pilot as fucking-cino (try look at the garbage inside all the airport ..is incredible).
I have many pilots in my customers, the tales they make about everyday work in our airports is really "scary"

 

[Rob]

First and formost I have to agree with Scott's comments, unfortunately though not really reality for most of us.

I usually fly NWA/KLM or Luftansa. I'd say service is a little better with Luftansa, however genereally not bad with NWA. However, would say Luf. has better record for being on time for me.

Bigger consideration for me is the equipment. Unless I am fortunate enought to get a seat in the front of the bus, the economy seats suck in the Airbus 330s. I think the engineers all had very short legs. Sucks for transatlantic flights. Seems these are now the bulk of NWA/KLM aircraft at this point. So, aisle seat is needed to have half the leg room of seat in front of you, or get the "golden" bulkhead or exit seat.

Also, side note if you are a laptop user, you must get a seat in the mid cabin with the airbus, as there are not outlets past ~ row 26.

my 2 cents................

 

[Rob]

Hey guys....buddy of mine found this site. Kinda cool....

Welcome to SeatGuru! Your Guide to Airplane Seats and In-flight Amenities

 

[Mark Worthington]

If it's not Boeing, I'm not going!

 

[Chuck]

Either Emirates or Singapore Airlines as long as it's a Boeing !!!

 

[MReid]

I fly to the UK every month and have tried BA, Virgin, Air France, Continental, and American. I also only fly first or business. Hands down BA gets my nod. I now have over 900,000 miles with them. I lke the 747 best (Hey, why do you fly an airplane with 4 engines? Because they don't make one with 5!). Virgin has some nice amenities: shoulder/neck massages (no happy ending, though), a bar, limo pick up and drop off, but I really don't like the Airbus 340. I have to admit that the new business class seats in BA are not much of a change, in fact maybe more uncomfortable. I do like the Fast Track service at Heathrow and the BA lounges are good to great in most locations.