I must admit that I’m a big fan of Countdown with Keith Olbermann. So, I’ve decided to take a page from his playbook for my final post of 2006. Without any further delay, I present this year’s Worst Airline in the World.

By June, the situation became desperate. The government set a minimum bid to takeover Varig at $860 million, but a bid of less than $500 million was eventually accepted since nobody bid higher. Even that bid was bogus and they couldn’t come up with the cash. Things were so bad that the government had to plan for alternate transportation for their World Cup team and fans to ensure they could make it back home from Germany in July.

At the end of July, in order to save some semblance of the airline, the judge in the case allowed the airline to be carved up like a turkey into two airlines. The first, New Varig, was bought for a low $24 million plus a commitment to invest $500 million+ in the business. Old Varig lives on saddled with all the debt and one pitiful route.

So where is Varig today? Brazil’s formerly dominant airline with a grand history and about half the country’s market share is now a footnote at best with no more than 10% of the market. They had 15 planes at the bottom of their spiral, but they’ve announced plans to expand to 31 recently. Customers have suffered greatly through all this with shifting routes and last minute cancellations. Employees have suffered even more with fewer than half keeping their jobs.

To put a big cherry on top of this sundae of doom, Star Alliance announced they would be booting Varig out of the alliance effective January 31, 2007 because they don’t meet the requirements any longer. Way to go Varig.

Our runner up is Air Madrid, which probably holds the record for pissing off the most people during the year through its frequent delays, cancellations and eventual shutdown (as mentioned yesterday).

You could have seen this coming from the beginning. Air Madrid came on strong since its founding two years ago and expanded quickly. Reading customer reviews for the airline is like watching a train wreck every time. For a sample of your own, look here.

The airline overbooked often and delayed flights for hours on end without warning. Countless holidays were ruined by their fluid schedule changes. The airline shut down in the middle of December in advance of the Spanish government declaring them unsafe and shutting them down themselves. This left over 300,000 customers stranded just before Christmas, a fitting end to a legacy of customer disservice.

I’ve been pretty hard on Alitalia this year, but my words can’t begin to explain the incompetence surrounding this airline.

You know you’re off to a bad start when you have an easier time counting the number of days the airline is NOT on strike in any given year. And striking isn’t even the worst of it. In yet another worker protest, two aircraft were sabotaged. (Fortunately the problems were caught before they flew.) You’d think that alone would be enough to scrap the airline and start over, but nay, you’d be wrong. Instead they celebrated their failures by repainting their planes in a new livery.

The Italian government has allowed Alitalia to continue with its inept ways and has made the situation far worse by meddling. They’ve repeatedly said over the years that Alitalia is important to the national interest of the country, regardless of the fact that it bleeds money like there’s no tomorrow.

In a year when even US airlines are making money, Alitalia expects to lose over $400 million. The promises of making money after last year’s government recapitalization proved oh so wrong after the first half of the year saw them lose an additional $100 million over the previous year’s results.

In a desperate attempt to save the airline yet again, the Italian government has just announced that they plan to sell anywhere from 30 to 49% of the airline to a private company. That would be welcome except for the fact that there are so many onerous restrictions that it’s bound to attract only the most insane investors if any at all. What are the restrictions? Well, effectively no job cuts or major route changes can occur, both of which are badly needed to right the sinking ship.

So Alitalia will continue to teeter as the government pulls the strings and management remains uncommitted to really saving this airline. For this outstanding performance, Alitalia is the Worst Airline in the World for 2006.

BWIA has the most history of any airline that went out of business this year. Flying in the Caribbean for more than 60 years, many thought that the airline would never go away. This year it was announced that the airline would fold on December 31 only to be replaced by the new Caribbean Airlines. BWIA flew within the Americas and to Europe and had approximately 1,700 employees.

Air Gabon, a small regional player initially, took on its current name in 1977 after Gabon backed out of the Air Afrique consortium. The airline flew primarily within Africa and to Europe with a variety of aircraft over the years. The government shut down Air Gabon in 2006 in order to replace it with a new privately held airline.

Independence Air proved to be one of the most spectacular airline collapses in history. It took only 18 months to go from a very profitable regional airline to completely insolvent as an independent airline. Management thought that going independent would work despite warnings from just about everyone to the contrary. At its height, the airline had 5,000 employees.

Air Wales was founded to fly regional routes out of Wales, primarily from Cardiff. There were 120 employees at the airline which operated throughout the British Isles and to Paris and Brussels. After several attempts to save the airline, hope was finally lost and the airline shut down for good.

Australian was effectively restructured out of existence by its parent company, Qantas. Australian was born as Qantas’ long haul low cost carrier flying within the Australia/Pacific region. In 2006, Qantas decided to shut down the Australian brand and instead expand its short haul low cost carrier Jetstar into the long haul market.

QuikAir was a small commuter airline flying in the great white north of Canada. The airline flew up to six BAe Jetstream turboprops from its home base in Calgary. The airline found its niche flying between Calgary and Edmonton’s City Centre airport, but once Edmonton forced them to move to the international airport, the airline started its downhill slide.

CanJet didn’t technically go out of business, but they ceased scheduled operations in 2006 only to focus on the charter side. The airline focused on low fare flights in Atlantic Canada, especially from its Halifax base. After a short stint into the West, the airline began to retrench and decided to completely stop scheduled operations in September.

Who could forget Hooters Air? The airline brought horny men from small cities around the country to golf in places like Myrtle Beach and Las Vegas. The airline went in and out of markets all the time, desperately trying to find its niche. The airline is survived by its parent, Pace Airlines, which continues to operate charter services.

Song is the most colorful of the airlines to disappear this year. Song was the airline-within-an-airline concept Delta created that was bound to fail from the beginning. With hand-picked crews, the airline was known for great service and excellent amenities, including live television. Song was folded into Delta but many of the amenities pioneered in Song live on with the parent today.

Styrian Spirit was based in Graz, Austria and also flew as Slovenian Spirit from nearby Maribor, Slovenia. The airline flew regional jets throughout Europe, but Styrian Spirit ran out of money and was forced to shut down in late-March of 2006.

Air Madrid was like a match. It sparked quickly, grew fast, and then went out in the blink of an eye. The airline flew around the world from Spain, bringing its brand of non-existent customer service and massive delays to people worldwide. The airline mercifully shut down before the government was to shut them down for unsafe practices. Over 1,000 people lost their jobs.

Centavia didn’t last very long. The airline was a low cost carrier based in Serbia. It was to fly to surrounding countries, but it was denied rights in all of them. Consequently, the airline had no routes and two planes. That wasn’t the right combination for success (duh), and the airline disappeared in 2006.

FaroeJet was based in the Faroe Islands and flew a single aircraft between the Faroes and Copenhagen, Denmark. I’d imagine there weren’t many people who saw a need for two airlines based in the Faroes, and sure enough, FaroeJet failed while the older Atlantic Airways continues to fly.

OzJet was the creation of auto racing owner Paul Stoddart. The airline flew all business class flights between Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, not the best plan for a flight of barely more than one hour in duration. After barely more than 2 months of bleeding money, the airline was shut down and people promptly forgot the airline even existed.

Air Turquoise was founded as an attempt to fly turboprops around smaller airports in France and to London. The airline first flew out of Reims but moved to Vatry soon after launch. It never caught on, and Air Turquoise stopped flying in July.

Air Madrid is (was?) a low cost long haul airline flying primarily from major Spanish cities to South America, the Canary Islands, and Europe. They flew A330 and A340 aircraft until Friday when they were effectively shut down by the Spanish government.

The really sad part about this is that people like our friend in the above picture are now stuck with very few options for the holidays. That’s why a workers group for the airline is trying to at least temporarily resurrect the airline to get people where they need to be. See this article for more.

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that these guys shut down, to be honest. They’ve really earned a reputation as one of the most unreliable airlines flying. Read some of these passenger opinions and you’ll understand why.

My personal favorite is the person who starts out asking if she was “the only person that has had a good experience with Air Madrid” only to let us know later that she was delayed by five hours. Apparently, the airline’s reputation caused her to anticipate “delays and allowed for this in [her] schedule.”

And that was a good review! In the long run, this shutdown is good, but for now there are a lot of unhappy stranded customers.