Air New Zealand has jumped past Qantas at the annual world airline awards.
Air New Zealand climbed from eighth-best in the world at last year's awards to fifth for 2010, and was also named best Australia-Pacific airline in Hamburg, Germany.
Its rival across the Tasman, Qantas, dropped to seventh place, down from sixth last year. In 2008, it was rated the world's third best airline.
South Korea's Asiana Airlines won the overall title, after being placed third last year.
The annual awards by Skytrax are based on surveys of 17.9 million passengers of 100 different nationalities over 10 months to April.
Passengers rated airlines on customer service, comfort of seating, quality of food, lounges and cabin crew.
Air New Zealand also won an award for staff service in the Australia/Pacific region.
Yesterday, it was separately named best airline at the 2010 Which? Magazine awards in Britain, which were judged on customer service.
Air New Zealand received a value-for-money rating of 89 percent, compared with the industry average of 66 percent, and 98 percent of passengers said they would recommend the airline to a friend.
Air New Zealand has picked up more global industry accolades overnight, taking out two Skytrax Awards for the Best Airline Australia/Pacific and the Staff Service Excellence Award for the Australia/Pacific region.
The top 10 rankings in the Skytrax awards were:
1 Asiana Airlines
2 Singapore Airlines
3 Qatar Airways
4 Cathay Pacific
5 Air New Zealand
6 Etihad Airways
7 Qantas Airways
8 Emirates
9 Thai Airways
10 Malaysia Airlines
