What Makes Great Airline "Great" While Others Are Just "Good"

Not all SkyTrax’s 5-star airlines are equally great. I would argue that some of these airlines received their 5-star status due to social media activities and their nationalistic passenger base rather than by providing 5-star service consistently. (And I do remember how we used to receive notice beforehand from our head office when any of the SkyTrax staff was travelling on us in order to make sure they were well treated). That is probably why Etihad is boycotting whole SkyTrax rating system.

We all (well, almost all) love our national airlines as they make us feel “at home” and know our likes and preferences. Americans love their carriers for being more relaxed and casual than many other carriers. Japanese love their home carriers for the language and Japanese culture. Koreans like their airlines for the food (bibimbab) and localized inflight entertainment. And so on. It’s like having little piece of your own home country flying in a metal tube with you.

But what makes truly great airline for passenger experience is when you feel great about their services no matter which country or culture you are coming from.

Great airlines are genuinely international where their original home culture is not overwhelmingly present. When you travel on board of Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines or Qatar Airways you don’t feel like you’re in Hong Kong, Singapore or Qatar – but it is kind of culturally neutral (in positive sense) service that you get on board these airlines.

Flying with Japanese airlines is great if you’re Japanese but for non-Japanese you feel just little bit like an outsider on board. Their service is good but if you are not familiar with their culture you notice little things that are not up to the best international standards. Such as using weird fonts when writing English text or not receiving same service standards in English as locals get in Japanese. Same is with Korean airlines; offering bibimbab on each and every flight is great when you’re Korean but for non-Korean it gets boring after few flights already. Chinese airlines are catching up fast (they are fast learners from the best in everything) but don’t have the same service culture as some of the other Asians have. And Asians flying on western carriers often feel the service being less than polite.

One clear distinction with great airline versus good airline is that great airlines have truly global cabin crew. They can pick up the best personnel worldwide without having to focus on (limited pool of) their own nationals. These great airlines often have majority of their cabin crew from countries with deep service culture such as Thailand and The Philippines, and other Asian nations.

Cabin crew pool is important part of building a great airline. When you must hire (for domestic politics or other reasons) mainly French, German or British air crew, you are not on the same starting line as airlines who can do their hiring globally, cherry-picking the best people from almost unlimited pool of candidates. These airlines can also often do limited time work contracts making sure that their cabin crew stays “hungry” and challenged to provide best possible service standards at all times. You won’t be serviced by 20-year of cabin crew veteran tired of her/his every day work at these great air carriers. No wonder major US carriers are so worried of Gulf carriers expanding in the markets.

So, could the secret to universally great passenger experience be to keep your own country culture at the background (you still must have it thought) while bringing forward the international, not country-specific service aspects?

And of course; great airlines also need to have the latest hardware, ie. modern aircraft and latest technology onboard such as the inflight entertainment. You can’t fly Boeing 767s for long-haul no matter how modern they look inside. So you need money, lots of it.