Air Arabia bags Best Low-Cost Airline award

Air Arabia, the first and largest low-cost carrier in the Middle East and North Africa, has won the 2008 World Airline Award for "Best Low-Cost Airline in the Middle East" for the second consecutive year.

This honour comes in recognition of Air Arabia's exceptional level of overall passenger satisfaction.

The awards, based on global, independent passenger surveys of airline standards carried out by Skytrax Research, are the outcome of the measurement of more than 35 aspects of customer satisfaction levels of an airline's product and services.

As part of the World Airline Awards selection process, more than 4.4 million passengers, of about 90 nationalities, were polled.

"Winning this award for the second consecutive year reinforces Air Arabia's commitment to quality and excellence in customer service. This award is especially significant as it is based on the feedback of our passengers," AK Nizar, Head of Commercial at Air Arabia said.

Air Arabia has served more than 10 million passengers since the carrier was launched in October 2003. Passenger traffic reached 1.6 million passengers during the first half of 2008, a 33 per cent increase compared to 1.2m passengers during the same period last year.

The World Airline Award comes on the heels of international recognition of the carrier's outstanding operational performance. In May 2008 Air Arabia received the gold award in the best airline category at the Mena Travel Awards 2008.

In June 2007, Air Arabia was named winner of the award for Operational Excellence 2005-2007 by Airbus, one of the world's leading aircraft manufacturers.