A British airline has been named as the "best" in 2024 by Which? but travellers have been told to "avoid" another.
Passengers told the consumer champion about more than 10,000 flights to rate British Airways, easyJet, Ryanair, Tui, Jet2 and other carriers to decide which airline trumps all others.
Of 22 airlines, British carrier Jet2 came out on top, impressively receiving five stars for customer service.
It was also given a customer score (combining overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend the airline) of 81 per cent - the highest of the bunch.
'Jet2 has gone from strength to strength in recent years'
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Answering "why Jet2 is the best airline", Which? said: "Regularly rated the UK’s best airline by passengers in our survey, Jet2 has gone from strength to strength in recent years.
"Its five-star rating for customer service is exceptional for any airline, but especially one that's competing with easyJet and Ryanair on budget holiday routes. Passengers said the cabins were clean and well maintained and boarding was well organised.
"People who fly with it rarely have problems - 80 per cent said they had no problems at all – and when they do it’s usually sorted out with friendly efficiency.
"It might not always have the cheapest headline fares, but your ticket includes a decent-sized cabin bag (unlike easyJet and Ryanair) and passengers gave it a four-star value for money rating."
On the other end of the spectrum, Wizz Air was awarded last place. For customer service, Wizz Air was given one star, and its customer score was 44 per cent.
Answering "why Jet2 is the worst airline", Which? said: "Wizz Air had a terrible 2022, with thousands of customers going to court for unpaid expenses and compensation.
"Bailiffs continued to turn up at its Luton Airport office well into 2023. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) even launched enforcement action against it in July 2023 after 'serious concerns' over high numbers of complaints and 'failure to meet passenger rights obligations'.
"Since then passengers have been repaid £1.24million in outstanding expenses refunds and the CAA has declared itself satisfied, but our survey suggests that Wizz Air is still best avoided.
Best to worst short-haul economy airlines according to customer score
- Jet2
- Icelandair
- Norwegian
- Turkish Airlines
- Logainair
- Swiss Air
- Finnair
- TAP Air Portugal
- Aer Lingus
- Air France
- SAS Scandinavian Airlines
- Aegean Airlines
- KLM
- EasyJet
- TUI Airways
- Air Malta
- Lufthansa
- British Airways
- Vueling
- Iberia
- Ryanair
- Wizz Air
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'Incredibly, 44 per cent of passengers reported having some kind of problem'
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"It’s the lowest-scoring airline, with one star for customer service and seat comfort and a customer score lower than Ryanair.
"Incredibly, 44 percent of passengers reported having some kind of problem – more than any other airline in our survey.
"High prices for luggage also mean that it’s not even that cheap for anybody taking a small case on board, which is surely most holidaymakers."
UK Managing Director at Wizz Air UK Marion Geoffroy disputed the findings and told GB News: "We do not consider the findings of this report to be representative or the methodology used to be transparent. Sample sizes are completely different for every airline - only 124 Wizz Air passengers were surveyed, while Which? spoke to several thousand people who had flown with some of our competitors.
"Wizz Air UK flew 12.2 million passengers in the last year alone, and the sample from Which? has surveyed less than 0.001 per cent of our customer base. The results are most certainly not what we are hearing from our customer surveys. It is unclear how Which? can come to these conclusions when only 1.15 per cent of their respondents said they flew with Wizz Air.
“We have been honest about our performance in summer 2022, which was not up to our standards, and that is why we invested more than £90 million to rectify this. We completed 99.23 per cent of our flights in the period covering October 2022-September 2023, and in the last fiscal year, our on-time performance was better than all but one of our major competitors. Over the same fiscal period, we saw a 67.4 per cent reduction in the number of cancellations and more than 90 per cent of refunds and claims were processed within five days. This is some of the strongest data across the whole industry.
“We conduct customer satisfaction surveys across our network and hundreds of thousands of passengers have said they are satisfied with the service we provide. Our results show our customer satisfaction has improved year-on-year and is significantly higher than this report suggests.
"Wizz Air’s brand consideration is higher than our main UK competitor and the Civil Aviation Authority has confirmed that Wizz Air is fully complying with its commitments to customers following the deed of undertaking signed last year. We are proud of this progress and are confident that the public’s perception will become more reflective of our current performance, which is among the best in the UK."
