Originally Posted by
BMEP100
Just to be even handed; A little checking shows this "magazine" to be one of those little industry publications that get's mailed to industry officials (usually for free). This one was incorporated in Oct 2006 and has a stated circulation of ( gasp) 105,000 WOW. It is run out of a travel agency office (Trazee Travel), in Morristown, PA
The awards you heard about at CAL came from JD Power, Forbes and Fortune. The Fortune award was 6 years on the best 100 places to work list. Different leagues I think.
And all of them are subjective and meaningless.
Jet Blue has won the J.D. Power award for 10 straight years now as the "NY area hometown airline". It just means that Jet Blue is giving the guy responsible for picking which NY based airline the most upgrades or free trips for him and his wife. A different guy picked CAL to be the "Traditional Airline Customer Service" winner in 2009. United, Delta, American, all win awards (even Jet Blue, Southwest, and Virgin America)
J.D. Power itself ranks airlines by Worldwide (which it usually gave to Delta or United), Traiditonal (which was CAL, Alaska, US Airways) and Low Cost (which are Jet Blue, Southwest, Virgin America). I've seen years where numerous airlines all win awards for numerous things like Customer Satisfaction, Financial Performance, and Operational Performance.
None of them mean anything, and there are hundreds of awards given out by meaningless entities.
The "Best places to work" is also meaningless. Anyone not in the industry thinks airlines are great places to work because of the free travel benefits, which all airlines give their employees. More subjective awards that really don't mean anything.
The biggest flaw with JD Power is that while they do occasionally read blogs and poll consumers, MOST of the data they get is based data submitted by the COMPANY ITSELF. So you can submit anything you want to them, and if you are really making an effort to give them data, and show great data, then they rank you high. Remember when SWA used to brag about being #1 on time departures, but then it was found that there were just self reporting to the FAA because they didn't have ACARS and got busted for it.
Oh and you want to advertise that you won a JD Powers award. You have to PAY THEM. And their ISO 2001 certificate has expired which means they are not held to account to any standard themselves for quality.
Industry awards are all smoke and mirrors and its all paid self-promotion and nothing more.