Kingfisher Airlines, India's five-star airline yesterday announced that it has received three global awards at the Skytrax World Airline Awards ceremony held recently in Hamburg, Germany.

Kingfisher Airlines was named the ''Best Airline in India and Central Asia'' and won an award as one of the world's best airlines in the regional breakdown for 2009.

In the competitive segment of low-cost travel, Kingfisher Airlines' value offering 'Kingfisher Red' was adjudged the ''Best Low-Cost Airlines in India and Central Asia'' for the year 2009.

Kingfisher Airlines has also won the award for the best cabin crew in central Asia.

The Skytrax world airline awards, which celebrated their 10th anniversary, were attehnded by around 500 people at Hamburg, Germny, where Skytrax CEO Edward Plaisted  handed out awards in 34 categories.

The award winners are selected by the airline industry's customers and are conducted over an eight month period, covering over 16 million air travellers drawn from more than 95 different nationalities.

The survey data is collated from a variety of sources, including passenger interviews completed online and via e-mail, business research group / travel panel interviews, corporate travel questionnaire / interviews, telephone interviews and selective passenger interviews and does not receive any third party sponsorship.

"Like most other industries today, the airline industry seems to have a different awards ceremony or survey result every week, and for the customer this creates not only an air of confusion, but can lead to a considerable mistrust of the relative merits of an award," said Plaisted.

"It was this lack of trust and clarity of survey methods that led  to establish the World Airline Survey back in 1999 - a totally customer-based survey about airline standards that provided a global reach"

The survey respondents nominated airlines in the 2009 best cbin staff awards, based upon a wide variety of service quality attributes for cabin staff, including assistance during boarding, welcoming passengers, applying safety procedures, food and beverage service efficiency, answering call bell, staff language skills, problem solving ability, discipline among staff, enthusiasm of staff, sincerity of staff service, friendliness of staff, courtesy of staff service, consistency of quality among staff, total service efficiency, total cabin presence and staff grooming and presentation.