Conde Nast has named Open Skies the best small airline.  This may well be true.  It is a small airline and getting smaller, not larger.   OpenSkies is the French(ish) airline set up by British Airways when an Open Skies treaty between the EU and the United States became a reality.  The airline is an all business class airline flying transatlantic routes between Paris and the United States using 757 aircraft.

If you are wondering if that business model sound familiar, it does.  This was the model for MAXJet, Silverjet and EOS airlines.  And, no, neither of those airlines are around today. 

What’s worse, OpenSkies is contracting as an airline rather than expanding.   At one point it was flying from Amsterdam and Paris in Europe (now down to Paris) and to JFK, Newark and Washington D.C in the United States.  However, after this month, there will only be flights to Newark.   In short, this is a quickly evaporating airline. 

And now we come to why I really dislike “ratings” from travel magazines and websites.  What good does it do to make such an award to an airline that flies one route and which is clearly about to fold into itself?   The landscape is littered with airlines that delivered “exceptional” service and then nose dived into the ground.  It’s disingenuous at best to be calling an airline such as OpenSkies a “best” in anything regardless of how much their onboard iPad made your socks roll up and down in excitement.   It is a disservice to the public.

Filed under: Airline Service by ajax