Cathay Pacific Wins ‘Airline of the Year 2009′ Award
Cathay Pacific Airways has been named Airline of the Year 2009 in the World Airline Awards run by the London-based Skytrax research organisation – the third time it has taken the honour in the past 10 years. The airline was also named Best Airline Asia in 2009.
The awards were presented to Cathay Pacific at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany, where Skytrax was celebrating the 10th anniversary of the World Airline Awards. The 2009 awards were based on the annual World Airline Survey run by Skytrax, which was conducted between August 2008 and March 2009.
Skytrax Chief Executive Officer Edward Plaisted said: “In a global study that proved to be our largest-ever passenger survey, it is truly a great achievement for Cathay Pacific to have secured the world’s best airline title in 2009. With over 16.2 million completed interviews, drawn from more than 97 nationalities around the world, we pay credit to the fact that Cathay Pacific is clearly delivering a quality of product and service that its customers really appreciate.”
Cathay Pacific has been a consistent winner in the World Airline Awards, taking the Airline of the Year honour in 2003 and 2005 and winning plaudits for its Hong Kong lounges and in-flight products. In the 2008 awards the airline took the Best First Class title following the introduction of its groundbreaking new cabins.
Skytrax says it star ratings reflect the reality of delivered product and service supplied to customers: “We do not include commercial factors (eg fares, schedules, frequent flyer rewards etc) in an airline star rating, because we are interested in the “front-line” product and service that customers receive from each airline.”
A full star rating determination examines more than 800 different areas of product and service delivery for each airline.
