I thought it would be interesting to name an Airline of the Year much in the manner of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.  That meant criteria would be needed.

Keeping things simple, here is what I came up with.

1) The airline chosen would be a newsmaker and this award would not be chosen based on positives or negatives achieved in the news over the last year.  It’s notoriety in the news period would be the determining factor.  For example, that means a bankrupt airline could be the chosen airline or the airline who managed an industry coup with an acquisition might be a good choice.

2)  Nominees who were in the news simply because of their own PR efforts would be excluded.  Henceforth, we’ll call this the Ryanair Rule.  Sorry Michael but announcing Porn on a Plane won’t qualify your airline for consideration.  Spirit Airlines should note that their PR efforts are also excluded.

3)  Because I’m US based and US focused, I will choose a US Airline of the Year and an International Airline of the Year.

Now, I would like to make this choice on or before January 1.  Actually, I would like to make this choice and announce it sooner than that.  With that in mind, I would like to ask you, The Reader, to make suggestions based on the above criteria via the comment section of this post. 

Here is what I want:

1)  Your nominee(s) for US Airline of the Year and/or International Airline of the Year.

2)  A reason why you think the airline was a worthy nominee based on its notoriety in the news

If I don’t hear from you, I’ll just make my own choices but I would like this to be driven by readers as I think some input will remind us more of what was going on in the airline industry in the first half of the year as opposed to the airplay airlines have seen in the past few months.

I invite you to encourage others to visit the site and offer their own suggestions.  The greater the participation, the more interesting this gets.

I’ll ask for you comments to be in by midnight CST Friday, December 23.

Filed under: Airline News, Trivia by ajax