I am somewhat stunned at the lack of nominations for choices of Airline of the Year.  That said, I did manage to spend quite a bit of time thinking about the subject.

Domestic airline of the year isn’t hard and withour further ado, I name:

American Airlines

Believe it or not, it was a touch call.  I did consider Southwest Airlines as well for the obvious reasons of its own moves throughout 2011.  However, I think that American Airlines was more consistently in the news for both good and bad reasons.  The airline spent 2011 managing its problems, announcing poor financial results, trying to come to agreements with its labor groups (and sometimes failing), buying a new fleet from both Boeing and Airbus and, finally, announcing its bankruptcy.   Southwest Airlines was in the news quite a bit as well but more inconsistently overall.

For International Airline of the Year, it was harder.  A number of airlines made heavy news at one point or another.  Most recently, QANTAS had quite a thundercloud around it with its shutout of labor.   Lion Air made noise with its Boeing 737MAX purchase committment as well.  LAN and TAM airlines were prominent as a function of their tortured merger needing approval in 2 different South American countries. 

 But there is one airline who did make more noise as a function of its creation and how its managed its brands.  For International Airline of the Year, I name:

International Airlines Group (IAG), operator of the British Airways and Iberia .

IAG is perceived as an airline holding company but it really isn’t operating like that and for proof look no further to Willie Walsh and his prominence in answering Iberia’s labor problems late in the year.  They are two brands that will operate and are already operating quite closely together.  They’ll harmonize more over time but IAG is “the airline”. 

In addition to operating as an airline in 2011, Willie Walsh’s prominence on issues regarding both brands and aircraft purchases, IAG also managed to snatch the purchase of BMI right out from under Virgin Atlantic (though the deal still has to be approved in the European Union.)

Over the next many days, I’ll be doing my traditional year in review for 2011 on what has happened and what will happen with airlines in 2012.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax