Ryanair ranked sixth worst in survey of 72 airlines

Ryanair has been ranked as the sixth worst airline in a survey of 72 international airlines, based on a number of factors including its punctuality and the quality of the airline, both on the ground and in the sky.

A report by AirHelp, a company that advocates on behalf of air travellers for compensation in cases of delays or cancellations, found Ryanair to be in the bottom 10 of all the airlines surveyed.

The airline was beaten at the bottom by other budget airlines including Easyjet and WOW air, with the latter coming in last place. While budget airlines generally didn't perform well in the survey, Norwegian Air bucked the trend and came in 12th place overall.

Aer Lingus, meanwhile, which is owned by International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG), came 18th in the survey, beating sister legacy carrier British Airways, which came in 21st place.

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CityJet, also an Irish airline, was in 27th place.

Qatar at the top

The AirHelp global airline ranking found Qatar Airways to be the best, with German carrier Lufthansa and Etihad Airways coming in second and third place respectively.

WOW Air was joined at the bottom of the list by Royal Jordanian Airlines and Pakistan International Airlines.

AirHelp’s poll surveys airlines on factors including how likely they are to arrive on time, the quality of the airline and how efficiently and fairly a carrier handles a delay compensation claim. Ryanair performed particularly poorly on the last metric.

A spokesman for Ryanair said the rankings were produced by “compensation chasing websites to generate publicity”.

“The fact that almost 90 per cent of our flights are on time and we receive the fewest complaints highlights how irrelevant these ‘statistics’ are,” he said.

AirHelp also surveyed world airports and Dublin Airport placed 21st in the list of 141 airports. Kuwait Airport was the worst performing while Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar, came in first place. London's Heathrow, meanwhile, came in 80th place.