Friday, May 28, 2010

Asia dominates 2010 airport and airline of the year awards

Today’s ‘List Friday’. I’m continuing the air travel theme that’s sprinkled through Farmdoc’s Blog posts since last Monday’s. The world’s changing. The centre of gravity of a whole lot’s shifting from Europe and the US to Asia. (Just like the IT mantle’s shifted from Microsoft to Apple [1], but that’s another story.) I don’t know why mantles shift. I guess life-cycles apply to regions and nation states as they do to corporations and individuals. Also newcomers at anything learn from the mistakes the oldcomers made.

And so on to today’s list – rather, two lists:

Airports Council International [2] has announced a list of the world’s best airports for 2010 [3]. The criterion’s passenger service as voted by travellers (though how the travellers are selected, and the voting mechanics are unclear to me). Anyway the top four airports are in Asia. And Seoul’s Incheon aiport topped the list for the fifth year in a row. No Australian airport appeared – not even in the Asia-Pacific section.

Recently UK-based commercial airline research consultancy firm Skytrax [4] released its customer-selected ‘2010 World Airline Awards’ [5]. Asiana Airlines topped the list, Singapore Airlines was second, and Cathay Pacific fourth. (Qantas came seventh.)

Interestingly Skytrax also produces an ‘Airport of the Year’ list. Its methodology’s transparent [6]. For 2010 the top three are the same as ACI’s, but Singapore’s number one. Six of the top 10 are Asian [7]. Ho hum.

No comments: