Opinions are like (name that body part); almost everyone’s got one. But if you take everyone’s opinion into consideration, patterns tend to emerge. Doesn’t matter if you’re talking about television shows, breeds of dogs, candy bars, or anything else…each country will have their Top Ten best and worst.
The same, of course, holds true with airlines. Prices, upcharges, history of being on time, of delays, of cancellations (and how they handed that), of losing your bags, etc., all go into your opinion of an airlines. You might be a fan of Southwest Airlines, but if you ask every American who’s flown, Southwest may or may not be the majority’s favorite. It might be their LEAST favorite, who knows?
Not long ago, S Money, a Melbourne, Australia based foreign exchange company, decided to see which airlines were the most loved and hated in each country. From S Money:
Folk love to grumble about airlines. While it can be exciting, air travel is a fundamentally uncomfortable and inconvenient privilege. Additional delays and curtailed legroom have a greater emotional impact when you’re tired and far from home (or trying to be). If the airline landed you with unexpected fees, long queues or grumpy service before you even got on board, you’re less likely to feel charitable about them when uncontrollable factors like the weather impact your flight.;
But which are the airlines that successfully navigate the treacherous route to customer satisfaction? S Money analysed thousands of tweets to find out the most loved and hated airlines around the world — according to what customers say about them on Twitter.
Their Methodology
S Money found the official Twitter handles of all the major airlines that had a Twitter account and collected tweets that mentioned them. They then analyzed all those tweets using an AI sentiment tool to give each of them either a positive or negative score.
They only included the major airlines from each country. They excluded charter, cargo, military, research, government and defunct airlines and kept only major companies operating scheduled flights.
Next, they collected the official Twitter handles of all airlines that had a Twitter account. They pulled up to a maximum of 4000 tweets in the English language that mentioned these airlines or their Twitter handles (for example, @airfrance). Any airline with less than 100 mentions (tweets) in total was excluded from their analysis.
They then studied all tweets using an AI sentiment tool that analyses text and attributes either a positive or negative score. If a tweet had more than a 50% predicted probability of being positive, it was labelled as positive and vice versa for negative tweets. They set a limit of 10 tweets per username to reduce the impact of bots and frequently posting accounts. This enabled them to calculate the percentage of positive and negative tweets for each airline in every country and continent.
Finally, they labelled the Most Loved as the airline with the highest percentage of positive tweets and vice versa for the Most Hated Airline.
Key Findings
- Bearskin Airlines, from Canada, is the world’s most loved airline. 53.4% of tweets about Bearskin were positive.
- India’s Go First is the world’s most hated airline, with a 73.8% negativity rating.
- The U.S. has two of the world’s 10 most hated airlines: Spirit Airlines (62.2% negativity) and Frontier Airlines (61.9% negativity).
- And since they’re from Australia…Jetstar Airways, Qantas and Virgin Australia all have a >50% negativity rating (I’ve been on the first two. I don’t even remember my Qantas flight, but I remember Jetstar [it was in 2014] being particularly “not good”).
Top Ten Most Loved Airlines Around The World
1. Bearskin Airlines (Canada) – 53.4% positive tweets
2. Pacific Coastal Airlines (Canada) – 48.5% positive
3. TAP Express (Portugal) – 47.8%
4. Canadian North (Canada) – 47.4%
5. Auric Air (Tanzania) – 46.3%
6. Fiji Airways (Fiji) – 43.2%
7. Tropical Air (Belize) – 43.1%
8. Manta Air (Maldives) – 42.3%
9. Airkenya Express (Kenya) – 42.2%
10. Proflight Zambia (Zambia) – 40.0%
Top Ten Most Hated Airlines Around The World
1. Go First (India) – 73.8% negative tweets
2. TAP Air Portugal (Portugal) – 68.4% negative
3. Jetstar Airways (Australia) – 67.5%
4. WestJet (Canada) – 67.4%
5. Flair Airlines (Canada) – 65.2%
6. Vueling (Spain) – 64.6%
7. Air Transat (Canada) – 63.3%
8. Spirit Airlines (USA) – 62.2%
9. Frontier Airlines (USA) – 61.9%
10. SpiceJet (India) – 61.1%
Top Ten Most Loved Airlines in North America
1. Bearskin Airlines (Canada) – 53.4% positive tweets
2. Pacific Coastal Airlines (Canada) – 48.5% positive
3. Canadian North (Canada) – 47.4%
4. Air Tindi (Canada) – 45.4%
5. Tropical Air (Belize) – 43.1%
6. Air Creebec (Canada) – 40.7%
7. Maya Island Air (Belize) – 38.1%
8. Air Inuit (Canada) – 37.8%
9. Central Mountain Air (Canada) – 34.8%
10. Alaska Airlines (USA) – 34.8%
Top Ten Most Hated Airlines in North America
1. West Jet (Canada) – 76.4% negative tweets
2. Flair Airlines (Canada) – 65.2% negatives
3. Air Transat (Canada) – 63.3%
4. Spirit Airlines (USA) – 62.2%
5. Frontier Airlines (USA) – 61.9%
6. American Airlines (USA) – 60.0%
7. Swoop (Canada) – 58.8%
8. Air Canada (Canada) – 58.2%
9. Copa Airlines (Jamaica) – 54.3%
10. Volaris (Meico) – 52.2%
The Most Loved Airline in Every Country
The photo (which they’ve made available as public domain) is virtually impossible to read. Click here to see a larger version of it, that you can click on to zoom in.
The photo is virtually impossible to read. Click here to see a larger version of it, that you can click on to zoom in.
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