Regular readers of the blog know that I’m not a fan of all these “Best of” surveys. That’s why I haven’t written about JD Power’s boring surveys or anything else like that. But, when a survey has an interesting angle, it certainly catches my eye. This includes a recent British survey showing Palmair as one of the top four airlines in the world. Who?

This year’s Which? Awards (out of the UK) features “the best companies and individuals that seek to serve the interests of consumers.” In the airline category, it’s not surprising to see Air New Zealand, Jet Airways, and Singapore Airlines (the eventual winner) make the list of finalists. But that fourth finalist? Palmair. They ended up tying with Air New Zealand for third place.

I must admit that I’ve never heard of these guys, so I thought I’d dig in a little more. The airline seems like an unlikely hero. Based in Bournemouth, on the Southern coast of England, Palmair has a single 737-200 chartered from European Air Charter. The airplane started life with Sabena nearly 35 years ago, but it’s still going strong.

The airline exists to appear solely as a way to funnel pasty white Brits down to warm and sunny places to try to get a little color. You can’t book online, and it’s recommended that you use a travel agent or call them directly. You get a hot meal, but you won’t get your seat assignment until you arrive at the airport. You can only bring 20 kilos of baggage with you as well. So what is so great about these guys?

There aren’t any reviews on SkyTrax to help us out, but there have been plenty of articles popping up since the airline made it on the list. One from the Telegraph shows that flying with a focus on personal service has really set them apart. Just a sampling of what they do well.

• “Singapore Airlines has 100 planes including the A380 which is the largest plane in service, on-board massages and a choice of dvds. All we can offer is the choice of tea or coffee . . .”
• Until 2006, [founder Peter] Bath made sure he was in the departure lounge for each flight to greet the passengers. He then stood on the Tarmac at Bournemouth Airport in Dorset where the airline is based and waved off every single flight.”
• When Mr Bath passed away, long-standing airport representative Teresia Rossello took over the role. She also ensures each customer can have their choice of seat by drawing out a plan in her kitchen every night.
• Stewardesses place fresh flowers on the plane, including the toilets, every day and the company has removed a row of seats to give customers more room.

Sounds nice, right? I’m sure it is, but it’s easy to do with only one airplane. Good luck finding anyone who can replicate this on a large scale. It really makes you wonder how this tiny airline made it on to such a big list. Apparently, there were 70,000 votes by the general public to pick the winner. Sounds like there was a heck of a write-in campaign on behalf of this airline. It seems that every person who has heard of the airline must have felt compelled to go and vote.

So this doesn’t really change my view of surveys. I don’t find this particularly useful at all, since I highly doubt I’ll ever be in Bournemouth, and if I am, I’m unlikely to be flying to a sun spot. This may be an excellent airline, but if it doesn’t fly anywhere you need to be, is it really helpful? In fact, I’d imagine most people would find this news completely worthless, but I imagine all of us would enjoy flying on an airline like this, if it existed in our own backyard.

Singapore Airlines is generally regarded as the king of the premium cabins. I posted on their last upgrade back in October, but now it looks like we have a newcomer to the race.

Jet Airways of India

If you’ve gone to India, you probably know Jet as the full service, high quality airline known for domestic flights. They’ve recently gone international, and now they’ve decided to go nuts on their First Class product. Behold, the birds-eye view of the mini-suite:

Now, that is one impressive looking seat. If you’d like to see more pictures, head over to an article in thisislondon.co.uk where I found this picture. You can also read the press release from Jet here.

You’ll have 26 sq ft of space all to yourself, more than in some New York studio apartments. As you can see, it is a private suite with double doors.  That’s not unlike what Emirates has on some of their planes, but it’s something Singapore has not done. Like Singapore, it has a 23″ LCD screen with a lie-flat bed, but this bed is 3″ longer than Singapore’s at 83″ long. And yes, there is an in-seat massager. The usuals are there as well . . . laptop power, great food, video on demand (with Hollywood and Bollywood films).

The plan is only to install this on the airline’s 777-300 aircraft. You can find one flying between London and Mumbai 5 days a week right now, and as more are delivered, the service will expand. I would assume we’ll see this here in the US as well once they open their new Brussels hub to connect North America with India.

The airline has made it quite clear that they want to be one of the top 5 airlines in the world.  If their reputation for service as a domestic carrier in India is any indication, they might be the right airline to pull this off.

It’s tax day here in the US, and even though we got two extra days this year, there is no such thing as a “happy” tax day. If you got a refund, that means you gave the government a no interest loan. Booooo. If you owed tax, well, you had to shell out the cash. So, let’s forget about that and delve into the world of airlines instead.

• Delta Cans the Dress Code - No, don’t worry. There never was a dress code for people who pay for tickets. But you may have noticed the nicely dressed passengers sitting in the worst middle seat on the plane. Yeah, those are the faithful airline employees trying to use their benefits to fly somewhere fun, even if it requires sitting in the middle of the section of five seats. Every airline has a dress code for these people. Generally it requires at least a collared shirt and khakis for guys up front and jeans and closed-toed shoes in the back. Well, Delta has decided that in a world where paying customers have no problem showing up in flip flops and t-shirts, having a dress code for employees makes them stand out like a sore thumb. At least, I’m guessing that was their rationale. Now, nonrevs (that’s non-revenue passengers) can wear anything paying passengers can wear so they can blend in better. Now if we could just get those non-revs to stop wearing their badges when they fly . . . .

• Don’t Like Your Seat? Pay up - American has made the decision to charge customers $15 to change their seat assignment over the phone if they didn’t book the ticket directly through American. They say this brings them in line with other airlines, but I can’t remember hearing of this before. Who else does this? Basically if you don’t book directly, you can only change your seat for free if you do it online or via a touch tone system. If you need to speak to a human, you’ll have to pay. Add this to the growing list of things you can’t do over the phone without paying. Maybe they’ll just get a 900 number to make it easier for billing purposes.

• Delta Goes Heathrow - Delta certainly didn’t waste any time here. Even though European open skies is still a year away, Delta has already gone ahead and secured the slots at London/Heathrow in anticipation. It sounds like they were able to get the slots from Air France/KLM, and I’m sure it cost them a pretty penny. But now they’ll be able to fly twice a day to New York/JFK and once a day to Atlanta. I would imagine the Atlanta flights would do well, but JFK, not so much. Virgin already has four a day, American six a day, and British Airways seven daily. Throw in Air India and Kuwait and you have a pretty full market. Two daily flights from Delta may serve connections to smaller cities in the Northeast US better than anyone else at JFK, but those people could easily go over other airports as well.

• Regular or Lite? - Last week India’s Jet Airways picked up Air Sahara in a takeover deal. Instead of merging them into the Jet operation though, they’re going to keep them separate as a mix between low cost and full service. What’s the name? Jetlite. Now first I thought it was the name of some weird new supermodel like Strangé, but then I realized it was supposed to be pronounced “Jet-light” and not “Jet-leet.” Ah, makes much more sense now.

Smaller and smaller planes are travelling further and further every day. It used to be that every flight over the ocean had two aisles and at least 3 engines. These days, you’ll find single aisle aircraft going across the oceans regularly. Unfortunately, inflight entertainment has not kept pace.

On most widebodies, it’s standard practice to have a personal screen at each seat. Sometimes movies are shown on a loop, but increasingly often it’s a full on demand system. Even though narrowbodies, like the 757, have started flying more overwater routes, airlines have been very hesitant to install these systems.

Sure JetBlue has personal television and so do some others, but most don’t. Continental has the most 757 flights overwater, and they still have drop down screens in coach (for now). High class airlines like Eos (which flies between London and New York) simply hand out DVD players at each seat. Until now, I can’t think of a single 737 that has had personal screens installed despite it being the most popular jet aircraft ordered flying increasingly long distances . . . such as from California to Hawai’i and even from Panama to Brazil.

So, it was with some surprise (and a little relief) this morning that I saw Boeing announced it had installed its first in-seat video system on a 737. This one, for Jet Airways in India, has 7 inch screens with full on demand services in coach.

Let’s hope other airlines follow.