Which airlines are the most popular? This is shown by the third annual analysis of the most popular airlines compiled by aerotelegraph and the media analysis company Unicepta.
Was there something? The pandemic is already far away and almost forgotten. Two years ago, many airlines still feared for their survival, since last summer they have been registering consistently high demand. However, new problems have arisen with this. Lack of staff led to bottlenecks in many places. The consequences were sometimes horrendous delays and cancellations of flights. Does this damage the reputation of airlines?
That’s what aerotelegraph and the media intelligence company Unicepta wanted to know. They research what people actually think about airlines with an in-depth analysis every year. The result is a meaningful ranking of the most popular airlines. The method differs significantly from all others that also rate airlines. It is mostly juries that award points based on transparent or less transparent criteria. Or passengers are surveyed randomly and mostly not regularly. Both approaches do not produce results that show what people really think. This is different in the ranking of the most popular airlines.
The most popular airlines in 2023: Emirates again at the top, Lufthansa falls behind
And what does that mean for the past twelve months? Many airlines were able to improve their scores in the 2023 ranking again compared to 2022, despite distortions. And at the top it got even tighter. Only six points separate the first-placed from the tenth-placed. With 58 points (100 would be the perfect result), Emirates is the most popular airline in the world, as it was in the two previous years.
Air Asia and Singapore Airlines remain in second place with 54 points. Wizz Air was able to work its way up last year, but has now fallen sharply. The low-cost airline lost four points and dropped out of the top ten. Your competitor Eurowings (plus one point) has improved again. It is now tied with other airlines in fifth place among the most popular airlines in the world.
Iberia is one of the biggest winners
One of the biggest winners is Iberia. The Spanish national airline has improved by six points and is now in fifth place. Turkish Airlines has worked its way up just as strongly and is now also in the group in fifth place and in the top ten for the first time. “In general, the so-called Media Net Promoter Score, i.e. the frequency of positive minus negative posts, is extremely high at Turkish Airline, which suggests positive comments on numerous flight experiences,” comments Unicepta brand expert Nik Stucky. The commitment as a sponsor of the Euro League has also paid off for the airline.
The airlines in the Lufthansa Group, on the other hand, fared differently. Apart from Eurowings, none of the most popular airlines make it into First Class. After Lufthansa had improved in 2022, it has now fallen back to 25th place, Austrian Airlines has dropped to 36th place and Swiss to 34th place. In absolute terms, they have sometimes even improved slightly or only slightly worsened. But other airlines have outperformed them over the past 12 months.
Over 450 million media sources evaluated
For the analysis of the most popular airlines, Unicepta Suisse evaluates statements about around 40 airline brands in the public media – i.e. newspapers, online portals and social media such as Twitter or Facebook. Over 450 million media sources are viewed every day. It’s sort of a look over the shoulder of the user that captures their true sympathy and antipathy for airlines. Then they are divided into three dimensions, which include things like competence, punctuality, price level or friendliness. These three sub-scores are then combined into a total score, with 100 being the perfect score. The 2023 ranking refers to the analysis period June 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023.*
* More on the method
With the brand analysis platform BrandTicker, UNICEPTA SUISSE (formerly Adwired) provides up-to-date information on brands. The application is based on artificial intelligence and uses publicly available information in social media, as well as online and print media, to measure how people are actually talking about companies and brands and use it to calculate various indices.
The media, especially social media, is a valuable source for obtaining the perception, opinion and assessment of the various stakeholders about companies and brands. The analysis of this media is based on an automated full-text search algorithm that searches over 460 million data sources every day. The statements and comments related to the brand are collected systematically in eight languages and globally (German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Dutch, Swedish) .
A media article could read, for example: “Lufthansa (the brand) is continuously treading innovative (the qualification) paths in sustainable mobility (the topic)”. This is a typical statement that assigns a topic of “sustainable mobility” to the brand and qualifies it as “innovative”. Brands, topics and qualifications are analyzed in different ways and output in statistical form. Negative statements are subtracted from the positive statements and put in relation to all statements in order to be able to compare small with large brands.
The Media Performance Index is a comprehensive evaluation of the individual brands in relation to around 1000 brands. The various performance indicators are evaluated daily and evaluated in the immediate context of around 1000 brands. The result is a relative score, which uses a scale from 0 to 100 to provide a system of comparable indicators and an easy-to-understand measure of quality. Because only broad benchmarking against other brands gives a clear picture of one’s own media performance. This normalization enables the performance indicators to be compared with each other and between the selected brands.
These three perceived dimensions of perception are statistically analyzed and evaluated daily: Expediency: How expedient is the airline’s offer perceived – for example in terms of pricing or efficiency? Reliability: Does the airline enjoy a reputation for being very reliable – for example in terms of punctuality or competence? Service quality: What service quality does society expect – for example in terms of friendliness or customer orientation?
By Stefan Eiselin