Singapore Girl is still a nice way to fly

NEW YORK – The only disappointment with the annual Zagat Survey covering 84 airlines and 46 major airports was that, for legal reasons, the survey team decided against linking some pertinent comments by passengers to the airlines they were referring to.

Among the comments were these beauties, and we’ll leave it to you to guess which airlines these passengers were going on about.

– I’d rather be a package on FedEx
– Their planes make Larry King look young
– If they could have pay toilets, they would
– When asked what kind of chicken they had, she replied “the dead kind”
– Sitting any closer might constitute marriage in some states
– They fired the last employee found smiling
– I thought the Geneva Convention prevented this kind of thing

Presumably, none of these comments referred to Singapore Airlines that once again swept the board in the international airline category.

SQ was the overall winner and also scored most points for comfort, service and food in both premium and economy classes.

Cathay Pacific and Virgin Atlantic shared second spot in the overall premium category, while Emirates and Thai Airways filled second and third places in the economy section.

Singapore Airlines won the Zagat international poll, held in conjunction with the NBC Today show, for the eighth consecutive time.

The typical survey participant took 19.7 flights in the past year aggregating 147,000 trips.

Hong Kong International (HKIA) was voted the best non-US airport, followed by Singapore Changi, Munich International, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion and Amsterdam Schiphol.

Worst airports overall as voted by Zagat were: 1, Paris Charles de Gaulle, 2, Beijing Capital, 3, Rome Fiumicino, 4, London Heathrow and 5, London Gatwick.

Tim Zagat, co-founder and CEO of Zagat Survey said, “Our results show that the airline industry continues its steep descent in the eyes of the flying public – record delays, cancellations and crowding continue to besiege travellers’ experiences.”

Delays and cancellations reached near-crisis proportions in the U.S. over the past year – topping surveyor’s list of irritants with 35 percent of the vote.

Southwest, Continental and JetBlue do best in this regard; US Airways comes in last, said Zagat.

Cramped seats and crowded planes ran a close second at 34 percent, poor service rated 15 percent, followed by security delays (5 percent), and lack of information about flight status (5 percent).

Despite all of this, 44 percent of flyers say they are travelling as much as they did two years ago.

-by Ian Jarrett

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