Star Alliance voted best airline alliance

Star Alliance™, the airline network for Earth, took home a clear victory as the best airline alliance in a readers’ poll conducted by the prestigious U.S. monthly magazine Business Traveler.

The survey, conducted as part of the publication’s annual industry awards presentation now in its fourteenth year running, had Star Alliance in the lead in the “Alliance” category with 46-per cent of the votes – 27 percentage points ahead of the next runner-up. This was the first year an “Alliance” category was included among the awards.

“It is a real honor for Star Alliance to be chosen as the leading airline alliance by such an important audience as the U.S. business traveler. From its inception, Star Alliance has been about providing customers a smooth travel experience and unified rewards and recognition, and it is gratifying to know that this group of frequent travelers applauds our efforts,” said Louise McKenven, Vice President, Loyalty and Marketing, upon accepting the award at a ceremony in New York City today. “We will continue to work diligently to find new ways to make traveling as smooth as possible across our global network,” she said.

Business Traveler is a monthly publication with a circulation of 80,000.

At the recent 9th Annual World Travel Awards, which acknowledges and celebrates excellence in the world’s travel and tourism industry, Star Alliance was voted “The World’s Leading Airline Alliance.” Individual Star Alliance members also received top honors, based on the votes cast by thousands of frontline agents and travel agencies worldwide. Lufthansa was chosen as “Europe’s leading airline,” Mexicana as “Central and Latin America’s leading airline,” and VARIG as “South America’s leading airline.”

Star Alliance was established in May, 1997 as the first truly global airline alliance. The member airlines are Air Canada, Air New Zealand, ANA All Nippon Airways, Austrian Airlines, bmi, Lauda Air, Lufthansa German Airlines, Mexicana Airlines, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways International, Tyrolean Airways, United Airlines and VARIG Brazilian Airlines.

Asiana Airlines of South Korea, LOT Polish Airlines and Spanair of Spain will join Star Alliance in 2003. The future member carriers will further strengthen the Star Alliance network which currently serves 729 airports in 124 countries with almost 11,000 daily flights.