On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:33:50 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 10:07:25 on
Wed, 20 Jun 2012, Recliner remarked:
Given the huge play BA make about being the UK's favourite airline
they're not going to step out of line.

Actually, it's many years (even decades?) since BA claimed to be the
world's favourite airline. I can't remember what spurious statistic
they based it on, but they wouldn't be number one using it today.

The claim was based upon:

"Favourite" - having the highest number of...
"World's" - passengers on International routes.

All the other big airlines being of a more domestic-passenger variety.

I wonder if Emirates would now qualify on that basis?

I wondered the same thing, but didn't look it up. But now...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%2...heduled_intern
ational_passenger-kilometers_flown

Yes, Emirates wins (over Lufthansa) by quite a margin. Although AF-KLM
would win if you combined their numbers (which I think perhaps we
should). BA languishing at fifth.

On this metric. It's possible you'd get a different answer if you
measured international-customer-legs [no, not their inside legs - ed]
instead. At which point Ryanair would seemingly claim the crown.

It's an interesting table. If you look at all the merged airlines, I
suspect the rankings would change.
Lufthansa+Swiss+Austrian+Brussels+Eurowings (etc) would almost
certainly beat Emirates, and AF+KLM might well be bigger still. I
wonder what Iberia and bmi were? Possibly, including them, IAG would
also beat Emirates, but would still not be top. I'm also surprised how
low Singapore Airlines comes. It pioneered the city state hub business
model that Emirates now uses, but has been comprehensively overtaken.