Swiss are good within Europe.

More comfortable, friendly, free drinks and snacks, clear pricing and so not really more expensive than Easyjet - and less like cattle haulage!!
Also convenient flight times, often no queues at all and best of all, web check-in.

I have always had really good luck with Lufthansa. Their flight attendants may not be very charming but they are competent. I admit I have flown only a couple of times with them but both times the plane was in good condition, and the food in business class was excellent.

Swiss also not bad, I just didn't find their business class accommodations to be all that nice for a transatlantic flight.

British Airways; Wow, what can I say. On my best flight with them I had to act as an interpreter for a Flight attendant who did not speak French on a flight into Geneva. My worst and last with them involved lost luggage and food poisoning for my wife, as well as everyone else who chose chicken. The plane smelled like a vomit factory. The lost luggage was not brought to the lost luggage desk, but was unceremoniously dropped off in a random part of the Heathrow baggage claim area 90 minutes after the baggage carousel had been utilized for another flight. I was lucky enough to recognize a neon green luggage tag of one of our bags being pulled on a cart. The BA worker pulling the cart simply stopped nowhere near where the luggage was originally supposed to arrive, took all of the bags off the cart, and pulled the cart away. We found a few of the other people who had lost their luggage, but I think most had left by that point. BA really seems to be a business that is surviving on a reputation it cannot uphold anymore.

I have a love/hate relationship with Easy Jet. I suppose that because I don't expect them to be on time and I would never check luggage with them, they find it hard to disappoint.
If the plane breaks down for 2 hours on the tarmac in Istanbul and they have to open all the doors to keep the plane from turning into an oven, that's just Easy Jet.
If the pilot aborts his landing at the very last second at Gatwick because he jokingly tells the passengers that he noticed another plane trying to land at the same time, that's just Easy Jet

I hate flying with Ryan air cattle class, at the end of the day it is not as cheap as their propaganda would make believe.

I still like BA too.

I don't fly long haul that often, but fly short haul around europe at least 2-3 times per month.

Long haul to US, I always go via London and BA as they have guaranteed flat beds. Some of the flights I've been on, the plane was a bit old, and last flight back from LA the entertainment system needed rebooting - however, that just encouraged me to go to sleep, so a good thing.

But the service has always been great, and to be woken by the smell of a bacon butty... hmmm.

Swiss are crap, and I've never forgiven them for charging me 700+ CHF for a flight to Vienna and offering only a yoghurt or a croissant for breakfast.

Turkish airlines, safety apart, offer a far superior service that Swiss.

LH - neither here nor there.

AirFrance, fine for shorthauls, but avoid anything with connections via CDG and only travel hand luggage.

I don't think they're that bad. When I'm at uni I regularly fly between Gatwick and Belfast and I've never had any problems. In fact the worst delay I've ever had with them is about 1hr. They're reasonably transparent with their pricing too.

However, maybe it's just because I only fly with them through the grey skies of the UK.. I can't dispute that the plane might turn into an oven in Istanbul

Hope I haven't jinxed myself because I'm flying with them on Friday night!

I never see BA dropping their standards ! They're among the worst airlines so I don't think they could go further down. Not once had I find that they're good. out of the 30 trips with BA in past 10 years, with all in business class. I don't even bother to complain. whenever I have a choice (in terms of routing or airline), I won't take BA.

Cathay,Singapore are great. Quatar, Emirate --I heard they're good but haven't ever tried.

For me, good service is not just safe ride, food that filling my stomach and technical factors like on-time, baggage check in, but also the more 'emotional' factors like human touch.

Last summer we took Easy jet from Geneva to London Gatwick, and gave ourselves 2 1/2 hours to make a connecting flight on Ryanair to Dublin to see a U2 concert the next day. Of course, The sleazy jet flight landed 3 hours late, and we missed our connection to Dublin. As most flights going into Dublin were booked because of the concert, we wound up buying tickets on a Air France business commuter flight flying out of London City airport the next morning. the cost of which was comparable to flying to Los Angeles.

This was the flight where we might have made it, but apparently two planes were trying to land on the same runway at the same time and we wound up circling Gatwick for another hour. I don't know if that was Easyjets fault, but I like to keep them as a target for my rage.

Much like a leaky sailboat, I still use them for recreation, but no longer for anything with a connecting flight or if I need to be somewhere at a specific time.

Be careful what you wish for. Economy class downstairs is really like cattle class. Yes nice seats with big screens just as you find on the current 777, but 10 seats across and long, huge cabins filled with hundreds of people makes you feel like sardines. Business class upstairs is also narrower than 777. The economy class upstairs is very very nice though, but very difficult to get those seats unless you book early enough. Suite class is amazing (flew it short haul SIN-HKG), but after a while, you feel very lonely in those suites...
Flexibility with flight time is also gone as it goes down to 1 flight per day from ZRH.

So despite the hype, A380 is better with the upstairs economy class and the fact that it is much quieter, apart from that, the 777 is better.

I like Flybaboo a lot. Granted they're based in Geneva, so for the Zurich folk it doesn't help much but.

Give me BA Business Class over Virgin Atlantic Upper Class any day. Good old fashioned service versus pretentious cabin crew and gimmicky rubbish. Twice I almost missed my flight because the Virgin limo was late, or the driver didn't do his homework and waded directly into rush hour M25 traffic. As for the services in the lounge and in the air (e.g. hair cuts, massages etc..) you only get them if they have the staff available and, as with my previous point you get to the airport with plenty of time to spare.

As others have said, SE-Asian>Asian>ME>European>others. Wasn't too impressed by Air China though, food wasn't great on all 4 flights, no onboard entertainment and flight attendants not too attentive, even Swiss is better I think, and I don't like Swiss or LH too much. Turkish Air may not be the safest airline, I wouldn't know, but the service is good and I the stopover is much more pleasant in Istanbul than other ME airlines, as much as I like Qatar Air for their competitive prices, generally good food and onboard entertainment systems (& often pretty and attentive Asian flight attendants) the stopover sucks.

I'll second Flybaboo - they're so good that I'm prepared to travel to Geneva to fly with them.

Their approach to inflight food is brilliant - constant grazing of very nice apero-type finger food. No fiddly trays or horrible plastic cutlery to deal with.

An excellent company.

And you survived without internet access for the whole duration of the flight?

Eh? Not following you, sorry.

they are good. i fly to lugano a lot with them and have never had any problems..

Totally agree. Singapore and Cathay are best in the world. Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways are also great. Brand new planes, the best service and especially good if you're travelling alone with kids.

I've only ever had one really good flight with Qantas, but it was in Business so doesn't count in the real world. Summerrain, that experience with the Qantas cabin crew sounds awful. Interestingly, the great experience I had on a QA flight was with an all male cabin crew - they were great with the kids, even took them off to play in the crew break area while I got to have a little kip. Honestly, if they weren't all gay I would have shagged them just for that!

Baboo is the best kept secret in the airline industry. We flew Geneva to Athens for something like 50Chf each and IMO got a better experience than flying a full service airline. And yes, it is absolutely worth travelling to Geneva to use them.

After they botched my dog's trip from Chicago to Hong Kong, I will never fly KLM again.

As there were no direct flights (then) from Chicago to Hong Kong, and thinking of my puppy's bladder, we decided to transfer in Europe to break the trip half way. KLM's animal hotel was then rated top notch. All went well until I stepped off the plane at Kai Tek to collect my doglet. "Umm...err... Mrs MC, there seems to be a slight problem..." The pilot from the first leg forgot to hand over my dog's travel papers to the pilot on the second leg - and without those papers my dog could not enter Hong Kong. To make matters worse, the first pilot , still in possession of my dog's papers, was now on his way to Tel Aviv. So they had left my dog in Amsterdam - and this was after they had assured me she was on the plane. There I was in HK, my dog was stuck in Amsterdam, and her papers were somewhere in the skies over the Mideast.

(The scene that followed was not pretty.)

OK - this was 17 years ago, but I still can't forgive them.


I loved the old Swissair and it's hard not to compare Swiss unfavorably to their predecessor. So I try to adjust my expectations downward and give them a break, assuming they manage to get me where I want to go more or less on time. I do have one persistent gripe though... must the cabin personnel be so patronizing when correcting my German grammar?

The only truly pleasant flights I've had in the last few years were on Singapore, Cathay, and Emirates.

Christ, 17 years ago....get the eff over it. I know war victims who got over atrocities better than you about Fluffy getting stuck in Amsterdam...when did you get reunited with the dog again?

Hmmm. I could forgive them too if it wasn't for those missleading ads they have - can't remember the words exactly but it is the one with the hostess and the kid and the strap line of "It's his first time flying and he's been spoilt for life". Sure if you're comparing it to EasyJet and the like, but really!?!

So it's OK for you to moan incessantly about Switzerland at every opportunity, but it's not OK for someone else to share their (quite horrific, by the sound of it) experiences on a thread specifically devoted to reviewing good and bad airlines?

Just as I suspected. You're very good at giving it out, but can't stand competition.