=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2007/09/27/DDN4RQMT8.= DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, September 27, 2007 (SF Chronicle) Ed Perkins: And the 'best' airlines in North America are ... Ed Perkins What's the best airline in North America? The world? According to a rece= nt release from Skytrax, those answers are, respectively, Air Canada and Singapore Airlines. Skytrax, a research organization based in London, regularly publishes the results of its airline survey results, and you're quite likely to find them helpful, at least for some trips. Whenever you buy almost anything, most of you like to think you're buying the best product or service available - or at least the best within your budget limitations. That's undoubtedly true for airlines. Sure, schedules and fares are the main reasons you select one flight over others, but when two or more lines offer comparable fares and schedules, you certainly want to choose the option most likely to provide a pleasant travel experience. When you don't have enough personal experience to make an informed choice, you often turn to surveys for guidance. And when you look to survey results, you might as well turn to the most extensive you can find - the one from Skytrax. Skytrax calls its airline survey the world's largest, with results deriv= ed from more than 14 million interviews. Skytrax assigns a 1- to 5-star rating to more than 400 airlines, providing separate data for individual classes of service, regions of the world and class of airline. That sort of detail is important because the differences between categories are so stark. For example, the world's worst business class is probably better than the world's best economy class, so a survey that aggregates results from business class and economy is virtually worthless. Briefly, here are some of the Skytrax highlights for 2007: -- Overall ratings: Only five world airlines rate 5 stars (in alphabetic= al order): Asiana, Cathay Pacific, Malaysia, Qatar and Singapore. No surprises here. The big Asian lines win just about every survey and award you can name. Skytrax gives 4 stars to just 33 airlines. Most of them are the usual suspects among the big international lines based in Asia and Europe. -- Economy class: Korean Airlines gets the No. 1 rating for its rear cabin, followed by Malaysia and Singapore. -- Low-cost airlines: Skytrax rates low-cost (or low-fare) lines separately, and it gives top marks to Australia's JetStar, followed by Air Berlin and EasyJet. -- North America: Skytrax rates Air Canada as the best airline in North America, overall, although it warrants only 3 stars. Four U.S. airlines earn 4 stars, but they're all in specialty categories: Midwest as a regional line, Frontier and JetBlue as low-cost lines, and Eos as a small, all-business-class line. All other lines based in Canada and the United States fall into the 3-star level. -- The low end: Airlines with 2-star ratings are pretty much a rogue's gallery of lines from developing countries in Africa and Asia, although Europe's BmiBaby and Ryanair also managed to win this dubious distinction. Only one line - North Korea's Air Koryo - gets the bottom 1-star rating. Overall, results are fairly predictable. I'm a bit surprised that all-business-class Maxjet rates only 3 stars, given that it offers really good prices on a reasonably good product. I'm not surprised to see Midwest earn a good grade, but - sad to say - recent changes there mean its product will probably fall dramatically. The Skytrax Web site, www.airlinequality.com, provides a wealth of other information about the world's airlines. It provides summary data on seating - not as detailed as you get on SeatGuru ( www.seatguru.com) but covering far more airlines. Skytrax also rates major world airports in its star system. Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore share top honors; North America's winners are Vancouver, Denver and Atlanta; and Europe's top ports are Munich, Zurich and Amsterdam. E-mail syndicated columnist Ed Perkins at eperkins@xxxxxxxxx To comment, go to sfgate.com/travel and follow the links. -----------------------------= ----------------------------------------- Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> If you wish to unsubscribe from the AIRLINE List, please send an E-mail to: "listserv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx". Within the body of the text, only write the following:"SIGNOFF AIRLINE".