Europe’s worst airlines ranked by travellers – from Wizz Air to Ryanair

Once again, budget airline Wizz Air has been named as the worst airline in Europe.

The cheap carrier was given the title last year and has since been slammed by customers for its performance in 2023. The airline received a flood of complaints about delays and poor customer service over the past 12 months.

Close to half of those who flew on the Hungarian airline apparently had problems with their flight, according to a Which? survey, with only 63% of the carriers flights recorded as being on time between October 2022 and September 2023, reports the Civil Aviation Authority.

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Around 2% of Wizz Air flights were delayed by over three hours which is higher than most of its competitors. The airline received low star ratings across the board, scoring just one star out of a possible five for customer service.

One respondent reported it was “impossible to communicate with the airline” about their flight cancellation, while another said Wizz Air was “extremely unhelpful and unresponsive” when they needed help.

The airline’s lack of pay compensation and refunds, leading to multiple outstanding County Court Judgments has been widely reported but the airline said it hired more staff to improve its processes. Hopefully this means that next year it won’t be at the bottom of the list once again!

Wizz Air has pushed back against the ranking, arguing the “survey methodology is misleading and the results are not representative”, and not enough Wizz Air customers were spoken to for the Which? survey to be accurate.

Marion Geoffroy, UK managing director at Wizz Air UK, said: “The results are most certainly not what we are hearing from our customer surveys. It is unclear how Which? can come to these conclusions when only 1.15% of their respondents said they flew with Wizz Air.”

The airline boss did admit the company’s performance in 2022 “was not up to our standards”, which led the company to invest “more than £90million to rectify this”.

She added: “We completed 99.23% of our flights in the period covering October 2022-September 2023, and in the last fiscal year, our on-time performance was better than all but one of our major competitors.

“Over the same fiscal period, we saw a 67.4% reduction in the number of cancellations and more than 90% of refunds and claims were processed within five days. This is some of the strongest data across the whole industry.”

The Which? survey asked travellers about their flight experiences in the last year, analysing results for over 10,000 flights in total. Passengers rated their carriers on seven different criteria, including customer service, value for money, seat comfort and food and drink. A customer score was then calculated based on overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend.

Just behind Wizz Air, with a customer score of just 47%, was Ryanair in the second to last spot. It also had unimpressive results in the survey, scoring just one star for seat comfort, food and drink and customer service. In the customer service section, respondents were particularly negative.

One passenger claimed the airline “treats customers with disdain”, while another added the airline “doesn’t do customer service.” The airline scored a feeble two stars for the boarding experience, cabin cleanliness and cabin environment, and received a slightly improved three stars for value for money – which makes sense as you can bag flights to Portugal for £13 and Albania for just £11!

Ryanair suffered with a similar number of delayed flights to Wizz Air (62% according to CAA data), its cancellation rate was not as bad, with just 0.8% cancelled at short notice. Iberia, Vueling and British Airways rounded out the bottom five airlines for short haul flights, with customer scores of 49%, 53% and 56% respectively.

Jet2 bagged the top spot among short haul airlines for the third year in a row – showing a consistently good service. The airline topped the table with an impressive customer score of 81%, and received a whopping five stars for customer service. Jet2 also has among the lowest rate of last-minute cancellations of any airlines in the survey, with just 0.5% cancelled at short notice, according to CAA data.

Best to worst European airlines

(Airline, overall customer score)

1. Jet2: 81%
2. Icelandair: 74%
3. Norwegian: 74%
4. Turkish Airlines: 73%
5. Logan Air: 72%
6. Swiss: 71%
7. Finnair: 68%
8. TAP Portugal: 67%
9. Aer Lingus: 66%
10. Air France: 65%
11. SAS: 64%
12. Aegean Airlines: 63%
13. KLM: 62%
14. EastJet: 59%
15. TUI: 59%
16. Air Malta: 58%
17. Lufthansa: 57%
18. BA: 56%
19. Vueling Airlines: 53%
20. Iberia: 49%
21. Ryanair: 47%
22. Wizz Air: 44%

A spokesperson for British Airways said: “We always work hard to get our customers to where they need to be on time. Like all airlines though, over the last year we’ve experienced several factors outside of our control that have had an adverse impact on our customers, such as adverse weather and Air Traffic Control industrial action. We apologise to customers for any disruption they’ve faced during these challenging periods and again thank them for their understanding.”

A spokesperson for Ryanair said: “Ryanair has industry leading punctuality with avg on-time performance of 87% in 2023, despite UK punctuality being severely impacted by the inefficient NATS and its incompetent CEO, whose ATC system has collapsed twice this year delaying thousands of flights and millions of passengers travelling to/from the UK.”