Want To Fly On A Top 20 Airline? Look Outside America

Odds are that if you’re an American, and you live in America, and you’ve never traveled much outside of America, then you likely never have flown aboard any of the 20 best airlines in the world.

Oh, to be sure, some Americans have flown – and may even fly regularly – on the likes of Qatar Airways, Koren Air or even Starlux Airlines. But since the three largest airlines in the world – Delta, American and United – are all based in the U.S., and have powerful frequent flier programs that tend to lock in their customers’ loyalty wherever they fly anywhere in the world, only a small percentage of Americans ever have flown on non-U.S. carriers.

And since no U.S.-flagged carrier ranked among the top 20 in the world this year – per a survey of world travelers conducted by British travel customer service consulting firm Skytrax – it’s safe bet that only a small percentage of Americans ever have traveled on any of the current 20 best airlines in the world.

Does that mean that U.S. carriers are “bad” when it comes to pleasing their passengers?

No, not necessarily.

But clearly, providing the highest levels of personal service to the nearly 1 billion passengers who board their flights annually (in 2024 U.S. airlines carried a record 982.6 million), is not the top focus of U.S. airlines; certainly not the way it is with many big-name – and not-so-big-name – foreign carriers listed on the Skytrax Top 20.

Rather, U.S. carriers, which have the exclusive legal rights to carry all passengers traveling between any two points within the world’s largest travel market (the United States), focus more on maintaining huge passenger volumes. And to do that they use comparatively low fares as their primary competitive tool, while most foreign carriers use high-touch personal serviceas their principal commercial weapon. Thats why most big foreign carriers deploy significantly more flight attendants and airport customers service staffers than do U.S. carriers. And those typically thinner employees-to-passengers staffing ratios are largely why U.S. carriers rarely make Skytrax’s annual list of top airlines

This year’s Top 20 carriers, announced by Skytrax in mid-June at the start of the prestigious Paris Air Show, was topped by Qatar Airways (based in Doha), followed by Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific based in Hong Kong, Emirates (based in Doha, UAE), and ANA All Nippon Airways (Tokyo). It was Qatar’s ninth time to be listed atop that list in the 26 years since Skytrax began ranking carriers based on their reported levels of satisfaction.

Four of those top five carriers are based in what essentially are city-states with relatively small but extremely wealthy local markets. To serve such markets, Qatar, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Emirates emphasize providing high-quality, high-touch personal service to justify the higher fare prices that most of their passengers pay. All Nippon’s business formula also focuses on providing high-quality service to cover the high costs of operating to and from the largest city in the world, Tokyo, which also happens to be a very high cost market that is a long distance from nearly all other major world cities.

Similarly, four of the five airlines ranked 6 through 10 on Skytrax’s list of best airlines in the world – Turkish Airlines (Istanbul), Korean Air (Seoul), Air France (Paris) and Japan Airlines (Tokyo), primarily target international travelers who for cultural, historical and economic reasons expect high-quality services and higher average fares. No. 10 on the list, China’s Hainan Airlines, is majority-owned by the Chinese government and struggles with profitability. But like most large Asian carriers, it emphasizes high-quality, high-touch service, too.

The second tier of airlines on Skytrax’s Top 20 list include No. 11, Swiss International Air Lines (Basel, Switzerland); No. 12 EVA Air (Taipei, Taiwan); No. 13 British Airways, London; No. 14, Qantas Airways (Sydney, Australia); No. 15 Lufthansa (Cologne, Germany), No. 16 Virgin Atlantic (London); No. 17 Saudi Arabian Airlines (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia); No. 18 Starlux Airlines (Taipei, Taiwan); No. 19 Air Canada (Montreal); and No. 20 Iberia (Madrid)