World’s worst national airline
Air Aviation News – There is only one airline in the world that has a one-star rating and you may not be surprised to find out it is from North Korea.
The Hermit Kingdom has been in the news this week because of the death of its leader, Kim Jong-Il. It’s one of those countries that few people have ever visited due to severe restrictions on tourist travel. If you were to ever fly there, you’d fly with Air Koryo, the only airline to have the distinction of getting a one-star rating from SkyTrax, which dubs itself as the world’s largest airline review site.
How SkyTrax ranks airlines is somewhat mysterious. They claim to assess 800 different criteria that measure a carrier’s service which they audit every few months. None of their rankings are based on customer surveys, reviews or commercial factors such as prices and schedules. The ranking is based purely on the service that a customer receives.
The rankings range from one to five stars with only a handful of airlines attaining the highest mark, several more have received four stars and the bulk of them being three and two-star airlines.
One star may seem bad, but there are also some airlines which are unclassified. These could be because the airline is still under review, but it most likely means that they effectively have a zero-star rating. In theory, these would be even worse than Air Koryo. Some example airlines in this list include Air Botswana and Iran Air.
A lot of these airlines, including Air Koryo, are considered so unsafe that the European Union won’t even let them fly into their airspace.
If you’re curious where Canada’s airlines stand compared to North Korea’s, we’re a lot better off. Air Canada and Westjet are three-star carriers which labels them as average. The domestic airline with the highest ranking was Porter which received four-stars which means they are better than average, but not as good as the world’s best.
