Singapore Airlines Tops the Skytrax Ranking, Qatar 2nd, and EgyptAir Is Named the World’s Most Improved
Singapore Airlines was named the World’s Best Airline at the 2026 Skytrax World Airline Awards, announced on 18 September at a ceremony in London. Qatar Airways, which held the title for the previous 2 years, took 2nd, and Cathay Pacific held 3rd. Further down the same table, EgyptAir rose to 46th, its highest placing in the years Skytrax data covers here, and was named the World’s Most Improved Airline.
The awards are a passenger survey, not a financial ranking. Skytrax ran the 2026 survey from September 2025 to August 2026, took responses from more than 100 customer nationalities, and covered more than 300 airlines.
The podium moved, and the places behind it moved more
The 1st 3 positions were a swap and a hold. Singapore rose from 2nd, Qatar fell from 1st, and Cathay Pacific stayed where it was. It is the 6th time Singapore has taken the top award, and the airline also won World’s Best Economy Class and World’s Best Economy Class Onboard Catering.
Behind them the table churned. ANA All Nippon rose from 5th to 4th and Turkish Airlines from 6th to 5th, both passing Emirates, which fell from 4th to 6th. Korean Air went from 7th to 10th, Swiss from 11th to 19th, and British Airways from 13th to 23rd.
Qatar’s 1 place slip is the least interesting thing about its year. The airline, a 9 times winner of the overall title, took 4 top awards, among them World’s Best Business Class for a 13th time, World’s Best Business Class Lounge for Al Mourjan The Garden, Best Airline in the Middle East, and the inaugural World’s Best Onboard Wi-Fi, a category Skytrax introduced this year. Group chief executive Hamad Al Khater said 60,000 colleagues deliver the experience for passengers every day.
EgyptAir wins the award that is not only about places
EgyptAir took the World’s Most Improved Airline title ahead of Air India in 2nd and Royal Jordanian in 3rd, and was also named Most Improved Airline in Africa, the region Skytrax files it under.
Its prior standing depends on which Skytrax page you read. The 2026 results page annotates its previous rank as 69th, making the move to 46th a gain of 23 places. Skytrax’s own published 2025 list has the airline a place higher, at 68th, the only carrier on which the 2 pages disagree. It is not a single year event either: Skytrax had the airline 88th in 2024 and 68th in 2025.
The order of the most improved award is worth pausing on, because it is not the order of the rank movements. Royal Jordanian gained 34 places, from 132nd to 98th. Air India gained 27, from 84th to 57th. EgyptAir gained 23. On places moved alone the 3 winners would have finished in exactly the reverse order.
Part of that is mechanical. A place is not a fixed quantity. EgyptAir’s 23 required 23 carriers to fall past it, and 2 of the largest falls in the table were regional, and ranks are spaced differently at 46th than at 132nd, so a large jump low down the list can represent a smaller underlying gain than a short one higher up.
The rest is in the definition. Skytrax describes the award as reflecting quality improvement across the entire awards programme, analysing a carrier’s change in the global rating together with performance improvements in individual award categories. So places matter, but not alone. On our reading, that second limb is what separated the 3 winners: improvement registered across several categories rather than concentrated in the headline rank. Skytrax does not publish the underlying scores, so the weighting is not something an outside reader can check.
Captain Ahmed Adel, chairman and chief executive of EgyptAir Holding, said the airline had undertaken a comprehensive transformation over several years covering fleet, cabins, onboard service, digital platforms and ground operations, with significant investment in training and service standards for cabin crew and ground teams.
The Arab field split in 2 directions
11 Arab carriers sit inside the top 100, and they did not move together. 6 gained and 5 slipped.
At the top, Qatar Airways is 2nd and Emirates 6th, down 1 place and 2 respectively. Saudia rose 2 to 15th and Etihad 4 to 22nd. EgyptAir is 46th, flynas 56th after a gain of 2, and Royal Air Maroc 58th after a gain of 12. Oman Air is 60th, down 12. Gulf Air is 75th, down 40, the largest single move in the group in either direction. flyDubai is 80th, down 6. Royal Jordanian is 98th, up 34 from outside the top 100 altogether, the largest gain. Skytrax publishes no explanation for any individual carrier’s movement, and none should be inferred from the rank alone.
The category awards fill in what the ranking leaves out. Saudia was a repeat winner of Best Airline Staff Service in the Middle East, its 2nd consecutive year. flynas retained Best Low Cost Airline in the Middle East for a 9th consecutive year. Royal Air Maroc placed in the top 10 of the world’s best regional airlines. Royal Jordanian took Most Improved Airline in the Middle East.
Why it matters: A Skytrax position measures what passengers reported, not what an airline earned, and it says nothing directly about yields, load factors or margins. Its commercial weight is in preference, and preference is contested hardest on routes where a traveller can choose between several connecting hubs. That is what makes the EgyptAir result the most interesting line in the table. A carrier that has moved out of the bottom third of the top 100 into the middle of it, and done so with recognition across categories rather than in one place, has improved its standing in the same survey the Gulf hubs are measured in. Whether that converts into traffic or fares depends on capacity, route economics and execution, none of which a survey measures, and the survey publishes no geographic breakdown that would show where any change in perception actually sits.
Outlook: The harder task for EgyptAir is holding 46th, because the most improved award is easier to win than to defend. Improvement is measured against a carrier’s own prior standing, so the same effort yields a smaller gain each year. Air India is the natural comparison: 2nd in the same award, and now 57th after a 27 place gain of its own, 11 places below EgyptAir. 2 flag carriers from large domestic markets, both rebuilding, both now inside the range where the Gulf carriers compete for connecting passengers. For the Gulf majors the 2026 table reads as continuity rather than displacement. Qatar 2nd, Emirates 6th, Saudia 15th and Etihad 22nd are 4 of the strongest positions any region holds outside Asia, and all 4 finished within 4 places of where they were in 2025.
Sources: Skytrax, The Edge.
