I agree with Saricie K:

quote:

I found airlines based in North America are generally bad (compared to Asian and European airlines).

My last flight was with Continental. I felt like flying poor man's airline.
It must have been the very first long haul flight where I had to pay for drinks, including wine served with food.
Even that nothing wrong happened, it was just such a poor standard.

I hate Frontier Airlines. Although they have the cute animals on the tails of their planes, every single time I have flown them I have had some sort of delay. Their planes also seem slower than other airlines'. Boooo.

I was pissed one day at JFK when my plane was late and called Captain Steve. "Why aren't you flying JetBlue?"

"Delta was cheapest."

"Yeah, Delta stands for Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport."

I thought that was rather clever and think of it every time since that I've had a DELTA delay.

quote:

Delta stands for Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport

That is a good one. I'll remember that for next time I fly them...


Ohh fun...
My personal worst to best:

America:
US Airways: Flights always canceled. Mean staff. Old planes. (US Airways Express is very nice though in contrast.)

Air Canada: Uncomfortable, cramped, annoying announcements.

Northwest(NWA): "Non-worthy Airlines/Northworst" really aren't too smooth.

American: Meeehhh, too old-school.

United: Evil schemes to illegally cancel flights. Weather and Mechanical errors are clearly fabricated in order to cancel flights that have a low number of seats filled.

Midwest: Warm cookies and all are nice, but the door came open in flight once. Dinosaurs of planes scare me: many are more than twice as old as me.

AirTran: A bit cramped but they're alright otherwise.

Delta: I've had good experiences, except the delays.

Skybus: On-time, just very trashy.

Southwest: Simple and cheap enough, no class though.



Europe:
TUIfly: Cabin pressure much anyone? (My ears always hurt.)

Jetairfly: Slow planes, cramped as hell, cheap though.

Lufthansa: Very sassy staff. Perpetual delays.

Air Berlin: Janky planes and delays.

KLM: Just Dutch.

Ryanair: They lie, cheat and steal (literally, baggage handlers stole from my baggage), but I'm cheap and they easily buy back my love with free flights.

Ukraine International: Ghetto planes, but good food and service.

easyJet: Very decent staff, normally on-time.

Germanwings: Simple and cheap enough.

SkyEurope: Flashy, cheap, punctual and modern.

FlyGlobespan: Super cheap ($130 trans-Atlantic), comfortable, on-time, free meal + free wine.

Of note: The average airfare is effectively about one-third (at worst half) what it was twenty years ago. (adjusted for inflation) Customers demanded cheap air travel and deregulation and they got it --

Results of lower airfares: More people are able to fly, so more planes take to the air. In order to make money these planes need to be fuller and fly more often. That means more flights on the schedule with less time between flights, so less wiggle room in the schedule to absorb any delays. And they need to all be 85% full instead of 50% to be "in the black."

So we have lower fares, but that's driven the industry to the state it's in today. You get what you pay for. Happy flying.