Best Airlines in the World - List of Top Airline With Good Business Class Reservations

An airline is a company dedicated to the transport of passengers or cargo and in some cases, animals by plane. The world of airlines is complex. There are companies that are dedicated to transport passengers and cargo on a regular basis, while there are also other companies that transport their customers or groups of customers in the timely manner agreed between them. These last companies are called "charter".

In the case of airlines that are dedicated only to cargo like FedEx, operate with a fixed flight schedule, others operate as appropriate to the customers who hire them. Some airlines have been dedicated to the transport of animals, as happened in Kentucky, United States, from where operated one that was dedicated to transporting horses for international horse racing events.

Many airlines have shareholding in the local government, they are the so-called "flagged" or "flag lines" that generally have the monopoly of local flights. Some countries, such as Japan, have more than one "standard bearer" in the case of Japan All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines. For some countries, having a national airline has been very expensive, such as Nigeria (Nigeria Airways), the Dominican Republic (Dominican Aviation, Dominican ATA), Peru (Peruvian Airlines, AeroPerú), TAME in Ecuador, Venezuela where Viasa operated and Avensa faced economic problems as a substitute for Viasa. A "flag line" does not necessarily have to be a fully public company, being mixed companies where the State maintains a high participation, for example the case of Aerolíneas Argentinas, in which the State owned around 10% of the shareholding before its re-nationalization.

Many flag airlines have been privatized and the market has been liberalized. This has led to the emergence of alternatives to traditional airlines, as has happened among other sites in Spain, where Iberia was privatized and competitors such as Air Europa, Spanair and Air Plus Comet emerged. It is also the case of Peru with the airline Peruvian Airlines, where the air market was until a few years ago dominated by Lan Peru and now there are many competing companies. However, in certain countries despite the liberalization of air transport traditional companies maintain a situation of absolute dominance of the market, as is the case of Avianca in Colombia, Air France in France, LAN Airlines in Chile or Alitalia in Italy and due to the aggressive policies they employ, the scarce competition they have tends to disappear. Another flag airline was Viasa in Venezuela, but it was privatized in favor of Spanish company Iberia, which dismantled the company. Now, the Venezuelan State has decided to bet on Conviasa, which gradually expects to position in the national and Ibero-American air market. Similarly, the airline Aeropostal, recently nationalized, and the nascent SBA Airlines that aims to accelerate its integration into the Latin American market with service across Europe.

In general, airlines can be classified according to the size of the network of routes they operate and their frequencies:

Regional airlines: operate medium and low capacity aircraft, on short routes or with low demand, or with high frequencies. Generally they only carry out local and rarely international flights, for example we can mention Alaska Central Express, Alpine Air Express, etc. Most low-cost airlines are included in this group.

Network Airlines: They operate a large fleet with many types of aircraft of various sizes, from small regional aircraft to jumbos for transcontinental flights. They are characterized by a network that combines long haul flights flying from medium and short distance, depending on the model of hubs. Most of the flag and traditional airlines are included in this type.

Large-scale airlines: They are mainly dedicated to long-duration flights or high density flights between the main international airports in the world, and in some cases they cover destinations on each of the continents, with the exception of Antarctica. Its fleets are characterized by having large capacity aircraft. Examples are Emirates, United Airlines, Singapore Airlines, American Airlines, Avianca Virgin Atlantic, LAN Airlines (now LATAM) or the former BOAC.

It is difficult to classify many airlines in a specific group, since according to their evolution they could belong to several. Many large-scale or network carriers franchise their brand to regional airlines to cover their local flight network, especially with planes of less than 100 seats.