As I posted a short while ago, I was able to book four Business Class award tickets to India for my family and I. This took up 480,000 miles redeemed! While it was painful to see the miles get deducted from my account, I am really looking forward to enjoying the flat bed seats and the meals in business class. I am pretty sure I am spoiling my family and they will always want to travel only in business or first class from now on. Economy is so painful, right? …

Skytrak announced its annual rankings for 2012. They rank all the airlines in the world by polling 18m airline cutovers around the world. And for the year 2012 (drumroll please) the top 10 airlines are:

Qatar Airways (Qatar) – No Alliance
Asiana Airlines (South Korea) – Star Alliance
Singapore Airlines (Singapore) – Star Alliance
Cathay Pacific (Hing Kong, China) – OneWorld
ANA (Japan) – Star Alliance
Etihad Airways (Bahrain) – No Alliance
Turkish Airlines (Turkey) – Star Alliance
Emirates (Dubai) – No Alliance
Thai Airways (Thailand) – Star Alliance
Malaysia Airlines (Malaysia) – OneWorld (Starting late-2012)

I am particularly impressed by …

Airlines of the Middle East – Emirates, Etihad, Qatar are all hot commodities. They have excellent service, a great on-board product and are offering more and more routes all over the world. They are also buying up all new aircraft to make their flight experience even better. They also have kept away from alliances and have formed their own network of partners.
United, on the other hand, while it is also expanding its routes to the Middle East, has lost both its airline partners in the Middle East. It lost Emirates …

Emirates is one of the best airlines in the world – see my earlier review of Emirates. They and their main rival Etihad have just announced non-stop daily service from its hub in Dubai to Washington, DC (DXB-IAD). This is great news. The third major middle-east airline – Qatar, already operates a daily non-stop to DC. Good to see these great airlines come to IAD. This is also good competition for United as it already has non-stop service to Dubai and one-stop to Abu Dhabi (AUH), Etihad’s hub, and Doha …

Taxes & fees must be paid ·        Valid on Qatar Airways operated flights only ·        Limited to Economy class (Booking classes H, K, Q, M, L, B, and Y only) tickets cannot be upgraded using Qmiles ·        Offer applies to return trips only ·        Bookings between Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo not permitted ·        Bookings from Houston, Washington DC and New York with final destination Doha not permitted . All destinations from these cities beyond Doha are permitted ·        The price shown on Price & Date Options and Flight & Fare Selection pages are per person ·        Changes permitted at a fee, within the travel period ·        The offer requires all travellers to remain on the same booking; travellers may not travel separately ·        No refunds, 100% cancellation fee will be applied ·        Child discount not applicable.

Qatar Airways from the Emirate of Qatar is one of the fastest growing airlines in the world. They are working hard to match up with their elder sibling – Emirates. As Emirates has developed a reputation of an airline with a global network, excellent in-air service and brand new aircraft with extra comfortable seats, Qatar is matching up.
Qatar Airways – Global Reach
Qatar Airways flies to close to 100 destinations out of their hub in Doha (DOH, no I am not pretending to be a character out of The Simpsons, …