Each year, the Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) asks travelers to vote in the Passenger Choice Awards. This year, APEX is focused on spreading the word in order to get even more votes to determine the winners. That’s why
they’ve sponsored a post here on the blog. They want your input. Voting ends on June 30, so please do it now.
This is actually a somewhat unique system of voting because it’s not asking you to rate your overall opinion of an airline. Instead, it simply asks for you to talk about the experience you had on the airline you chose for your last flight. If you take the full survey, it’s no more than 10 minutes in length, but you can pick and choose the areas of the passenger experience that you want to comment on, so it can actually be much quicker.
Curious to know what the categories are? Well, here they are with last year’s winners:
- Best Overall Passenger Experience – Virgin America
- Best in Region: Africa – Ethiopian Airlines
- Best in Region: Americas – Virgin America
- Best in Region: Asia and Australasia – Garuda Indonesia
- Best in Region: Europe – Virgin Atlantic
- Best in Region: Middle East – Emirates
- Best Inflight Publication – Taca International Airlines (Merged with Avianca)
- Best IFE User Interface – Virgin Atlantic
- Best Inflight Connectivity & Communications – Norwegian Air Shuttle
- Best Inflight Video – TAP Portugal
- Best Cabin Ambiance – SWISS
- Best Food & Beverage, in conjunction with IFSA – Turkish Airlines
- Best Ground Experience – Virgin America
There’s probably little surprise that Virgin-related airlines won in so many categories last year, however, you might be scratching your head about, say, the winner in Asia. Naturally, this is the result of who ends up participating. If one airline pushes voting for the awards to its frequent fliers, it can have a real impact on the results. So this year, I’m hoping that we can get more people involved who aren’t directly tied to a single airline. That’s your cue…
Voting ends on June 30, so vote now. It’s time to have your say. Winners will be announced at the APEX Expo in September.
16 comments on “You Have Until June 30 to Vote for Your Favorite Airline (Sponsored Post)”
I like the category for inflight-magazine. That’s digging pretty deep. . . . .I think I would go for “None of The Above” on that one.
Too bad there isn’t a “Most Comfortable Seats” category. Of course, there’d be no winner.
Wish I wasn’t restricted to the last flight I flew. That was SFO-HNL on UAL so the experience, even for Premium Economy, is going to be worse than it would be in other UAL Premium Economy flights because it’s considered a “We don’t dare upgrade this plane until the paneling starts falling off” leisure flight on older second class UAL planes.
What I would really like to do is talk about my EVA Air flight to Taipei in Premium Laurel class. But I can’t because 1) It wasn’t my last flight, and 2) I haven’t flown it yet. 2.5 months to go….sigh…
EVA Premium Laurel is delightful; a SEA to TPE flight in that class in 2010 was probably the most pleasant flight I’ve ever had. Enjoy it!!
Tell that to my girlfriend. She’s still grumbling that it’s not a Hello Kitty flight…sheesh…
And actually it’s not Premium Laurel…it’s Royal Laurel class with the herringbone lie flats…
To be fair, I find the United hemispheres magazine to be one of the best out there. That’s something UA is definitely doing right.
Rating by last flight taken makes sense because it’s more likely to be accurate than an overall perception that could just be the result of one small thing (good or bad) several years ago.
Brett, I assume this Apex is much better than Skytrax right?
Sanjeev M – Well, this is an industry group but the results aren’t manipulated or anything like that. The only thing that skews the results is if an airline decides to push it really hard to its passengers, and then they get a lot more votes because of it. Not much you can do about that.
Best ariline ever? Ozark Airlines!
Southwest deserves everyone of these awards.
Yes for some of these categories for Southwest but when it comes to website, boarding and food WN is not the winner.
I’m sure you have to agree though that Southwest is the Best in Region: Middle East
Were you compensated for this post? Just think disclosure is important in the blogging world (the FTC likes it too!)
Cacinda – I’m just going to assume you missed the words “sponsored post” in the title as well as the mention in the text saying “That’s why they’ve sponsored a post here on the blog.” So yes, of course this is compensated. That’s what a sponsored post is.
Not just that, but you have an “Ethics” tab on the navigation; which is even the second tab, giving it more prominence.
CF – So sorry, you are right, I did miss it, duh, my fault. I just see so many bloggers not mentioning this and glad to know that you are.