KEY POINTS:
Air New Zealand has dropped in the latest rankings of the world's airlines, falling further behind winner Singapore Airlines.
The national carrier was down one place to eighth in the World Airline Awards, which was voted on by 15 million passengers worldwide.
However, it collected the award for best airline in the pacific, ahead of Qantas in that category.
Singapore Airlines was the winner for the third time in 10 years while Cathay Pacific too second place and picked up the award for world's best First Class.
Australia's recently troubled airline Qantas was ranked third.
"The global rating for Qantas is interesting" says Edward Plaisted, CEO of Skytrax which ran the survey. "When we look at more localised studies, reporting etc, we found that Qantas comes under fire from some media that clearly contradicts a more widespread view of Qantas customers that voted for the airline in the survey.
"We do find that many countries flag-carrier airlines suffer fairly vitriolic levels of reporting in their local regions, and the airline industry remains a business that some areas of the press seem to love-to-hate."
Sydney Airport won the best first class lounge award and was praised as being of the quality you would expect to find in a 5-star hotel or restaurant.
Top 10(last year's rating in brackets)
1 Singapore Airlines (1)
2 Cathay Pacific (3)
3 Qantas (5)
4 Thai Airways (2)
5 Asiana Airlines (12)
6 Malaysia Airlines (6)
7 Qatar Airways (4)
8 Air New Zealand (7)
9 Emirates (9)
10 Etihad Airways (23)
- NZ HERALD STAFF
