2018 ratings of airlines and airports

SAA FIFTH ON AIRHELP: CLAIMS PROCESSING

KLM and Emirates, airlines with passionate fan bases, ranked 11th and 16th respectively.

Last summer, on a bucket list trip through southern Africa, I took a total of six flights on South African Airways. On the first one, a 15-hour trip from New York’s JFK Airport to Johannesburg, my air vent and seat-back screen were broken. On my next five flights, the situation was only marginally better.

Within a week of my return, an SAA customer service agent got an angry note from me citing the airline’s outdated planes and unsympathetic flight attendants.

Surely I wasn’t the only one complaining: The company seemed well-versed in responding to inquiries of this nature. Staff apologised quickly and gave me a mileage credit. It didn’t undo the experience, but the show of humanity is rare in the aviation industry.

It’s also the reason the deep-in-debt carrier took the fifth slot in this year’s 2018 AirHelp Score report. AirHelp is a company that advocates on behalf of air travellers for compensation for delays or cancellations.

Its sixth annual survey uses data from the first quarter of the year to rank the 72 international airlines for which the company had statistically significant data. Overall rankings are based on three factors: on-time performance, quality of service and a claims-processing score.

“SAA has a fantastic claims-processing score,” says Ashley Raiteri, an industry advisor for AirHelp. The airline earned 8.69 points out of 10. “Irregularities in flights are going to happen,” Raiteri adds. “What’s important is whether the airline has planned for that so they can make the experience less hellish for the consumer.”

Surprises exist on both the best and worst lists. Iberia, which ranked among the best airlines on a similar report from FlightStats last year, purely according to on-time performance, appears on AirHelp’s worst airlines list due to its poor “claim processing score”. KLM and Emirates, airlines with passionate fan bases, ranked 11th and 16th respectively.

While budget carriers did not fare well, with Ryanair, EasyJet Airline and WOW Air all appearing among the bottom 10 airlines, there was one exception: Norwegian Air Shuttle ranked 12th overall, reflecting a 76% on-time record.

The data concerning best and worst airports contain similar surprises. No American hubs were ranked in the top 30.

Seattle-Tacoma took the domestic lead, in the 33rd slot, while a large number of Brazilian airports dominated the charts, which Raiteri attributes to good local weather and a “hub and spoke” route network that keeps flights on time.

AirHelp’s data for airports cover 141 destinations and factor in on-time performance, quality of service and online consumer sentiment, but its rankings heavily favour the first two criteria.

Different airports have different problems,from power outages to weather delays. – Bloomberg