The nation’s largest airline company, Indigo Airlines was ranked the seventh worst, at 103rd in the global ranking for aircraft carriers, ‘AirHelp Score Report 2024,’ which was released on Tuesday, December 3. However, the airline has refuted the claims of the report.
AirHelp Inc., the EU-based firm analyses metrics including flight disruptions, lost luggage, and other customer service claims and publishes the best and worst performing airlines.
In the 2024 report, Brussels Air, a subsidiary of Lufthansa Air, was ranked first, while last year’s topper Qatar Airways slipped into second position. AirHelp ranked US-based United Airlines in the third position.
Tunisia’s national airline, Tunisair was ranked as the worst airline in the world. It was ranked 109th in the global ranking, with Polish airline Buzz as the second worst at 108, followed by another Tunisian airliner, Nouvelair.
Meanwhile, India’s flag carrier Air India was ranked 61 in the ranking, way ahead of Indigo Airlines.
The rankings have 3 cohorts, in which they are given points out of ten, ‘On-Time Performance”, “Customer Operation”, and “Claim Processing”. AirHelp takes their average and calculates it before publishing the rankings.
Indigo Airlines’ claim processing scores stood very low at 0.3 out of 10, Air India scored 4.1 in the same cohort. Brussels Air, which was ranked first scored 8.7 out of 10 in claim processing.
The Indian low-cost airline Indigo while denying the claims of the report, stated that the airline scores high in the data published by India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), on airline punctuality and customer complaints monthly.
Dismissing the rankings, Indigo Airlines, in a statement, said AirHelp, “does not report the sample size from India, and neither takes into account the methodology or compensation guidelines used by the global aviation industry – casting a doubt on its credibility”.
According to the DGCA data, in the months of January-September, budget carrier IndiGo carried more than 7.25 crore passengers, clocking a market share of 61.3 per cent, followed by Tata Group-run Air India flying over 1.64 crore passengers with 13.9 per cent share.
With its fleet of more than 380 aircraft, the airline operates around 2,100 daily flights and connects over 85 domestic destinations and more than 30 international destinations.