Qantas has rebounded from its worst-ever performance in the aviation industry’s annual awards to be named the world’s 14th best airline, after the national carrier’s reputation was badly damaged by a string of scandals during the pandemic.
The national carrier climbed 10 spots in the 2025 Skytrax World Airline awards from its nadir of 24th place in 2024, after customers across more than 100 nationalities voted in the world’s largest airline passenger satisfaction survey.
Qatar Airways was named the world’s best airline for the second consecutive year, which will benefit Qantas’s main domestic competitor, Virgin Australia, given it has just entered into a partnership with the Gulf carrier.
Virgin recently entered a code-sharing agreement with Qatar, meaning there is now a second Australian carrier apart from Qantas that flies to the Middle East with a global network of connections beyond that.
Qatar has been crowned the winner of the Skytrax awards nine times. This year, Singapore Airlines came second and Cathay Pacific third, with Qantas’s international partner, Emirates, ranked fourth.
The Japanese airline All Nippon Airways came fifth, followed by Turkish Airlines, which is expanding its offering into the Australian market with reported plans to fly from Sydney to Istanbul daily from 2026.
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Qantas has been working hard to improve its optics after emerging from pandemic disruptions to post record multibillion-dollar profits amid widespread customer fury that precipitated the retirement of the airline’s long-term chief executive Alan Joyce.
The beleaguered airline was beset by controversies including itsillegal sacking of more than 1,800 baggage handlersresulting in a $120m compensation payout and a$100m federal court finefor misleading customers by allegedly selling tickets for flights it had cancelled.
In August 2024, the Qantas boardcut Joyce’s final pay packet by $9.26mafter a self-launched review into the airline’s governance found that “considerable harm” had been done under Joyce’s leadership.
Dr Andrew Hughes, a marketing lecturer at the Australian National University, said Qantas’s rebound suggested its massive investment in its new customer experience program was paying off.
He said “behind the scenes” he would expect the cost of the program to have been just under $1bn.
Hughes said the program was the airline’s push to reverse a “lack of investment in their brand offering” during Joyce’s tenure at the helm by spending more on improving the customer experience.
“They really had focused on a lot of publicity announcements about things like Project Sunrise,” Hughes said, referring to the airline’s plan to launch ultra-long-haul flights from eastern Australia to Europe and New York.
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Qantas was contacted for comment.
New measures included upgrades to the Qantas fleet, the refurbishment of its airport lounges, and dividing passengers into groups to smooth out the boarding process, Hughes said, all of which had contributed to the airline’s success in rebuilding customer perception.
“The overall experience offering is still better than Virgin,” he said, although he believed the smaller airline would become “a lot more competitive” over the next five years, thanks to its code-sharing agreement with Qatar.
Hughes said Qantas’s reputation had been “terrible” but he would expect the airline to continue to go up in the rankings as long as it managed its budget to continue to fund improvements.
“It’s been a slow-build process to improve their branding,” he said. “These are early signs they are on the right track.”
However, he said there would be “some hiccups along the way”, pointing tothe revamp of Qantas’s loyalty program.
In January, the airline announced it was broadly increasing the amount of frequent flyer points needed to redeem Classic Reward flights, effectively lowering their value.
“I don’t think many people realise just how many points they’re about to lose,” Hughes said.