All Nippon receives Skytrax 5 stars for 11th year in a row. How the Italians are doing

Eleven consecutive times. They are the ones in which All Nippon Airways, also known by the acronym ANA, received the prestigious 5 stars from the British rating agency Skytrax. The latest, just a few days ago, confirming that Japan's largest airline continues to offer an outstanding product to its customers. Among them, perhaps, could soon be the Italian ones if, as one hopes, ANA decides to pick up the thread broken in 2020 when the announced direct connection between Milan and Tokyo was cancelled even before leaving due to Covid pandemic.

The company's flagship products are certainly those found on eight of its 13 Boeing 777-300ERs: the First Class named 'The Suite' And Business Class christened 'The Room', but a First cabin is also present on the other five 777-300ERs as well as on the three Airbus A380s that are used to connect Tokyo with Honolulu exclusively. Both the 777-300ERs and A380s are outfitted in four classes, while the Boeing 787-8, 787-9 and 787-10 are outfitted with three or two classes.

In the empyrean of Skytrax, ANA is in the company of. Nine other airlines that also boast the 5-star rating: Asiana Airlines, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Hainan Airlines, Eva Air, Garuda Indonesia, Cathay Pacific, Korean Air and Qatar Airways. Scrolling down the list, one fact clearly emerges: they are all Asian airlines and of these nine (with the sole exception of Qatar Airways) are from the Far East, confirming that the Far East is the world's best-flying region. In recent years (Skytrax's star ranking has been in existence since 1999), only Lufthansa had managed to sneak in the handful of Asian pentastasized, but the fifth star she received in 2017 had been revoked five years later, in 2022.

ANA is not the most 'long-lived', among the 5-star companies, if one looks at the years in which it has consecutively received recognition. From this point of view, the 'veteran' is Korea's Asiana Airlines, which in 2023 received Skytrax 5 stars for the seventeenth consecutive year. They are followed by Cathay Pacific and China's Hainan Airlines who have had them for 13 years straight, ANA (for 11 years, precisely), Garuda Indonesia (10 years), Eva Air and Qatar Airways (8 years), Korean Air (7 years), Japan Airlines (6 years) and Singapore Airlines (5 years).

It may come as a surprise that the latter, voted most often over the past two decades by Skytrax itself as a 'the best company in the world', Has achieved the 5 stars consecutively for only 5 years.

But Skytrax's own ranking of the '10 best companies in the world' last June Doesn't retrace the list of 10 5-star companies: In front of them all is, indeed, Singapore Airlines followed by Qatar Airways, ANA, Emirates, Japan Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Air France, Cathay Pacific, Eva Air and Korean Air. Three of these, namely Emirates, Turkish and Air France, have four Skytrax stars and not five. Yet they are among the ten best in the world in consideration of certain aspects of service, product and amenities on board or/and at the airport judged 'outstanding', exceptional.

Returning to the stars, there are only two companies included by Skytrax in the 2023 ranking: Air Dolomiti which has 4 stars and ITA Airways, which received just 3 stars. We say 'just barely' because just this year, with the introduction of the new cabins on A320neo and A220, but even more so with the introduction of the new cabins on A330-900s and A321neo aircraft, the Italian company has certainly made a considerable leap forward in terms of the 'hard' product offered on its aircraft.

So it would be reasonable to expect a 'tweak' by Skytrax and the addition (we believe deserved) of a fourth star.

• Skytrax