KLM named 5th-worst airline in Europe
Minh K Tran / Shutterstock.com
By Simone Jacobs
Dutch airline KLM has been named the fifth-worst airline in Europe in a ranking by flight compensation company Flightright.
Flightright Index 2025
The Flightright Index is released annually to help travellers choose the best airline for their next flight, ensuring a good start to their holiday. To compile the ranking, Flightright analyses the 20 largest airlines in Europe. The airlines are scored based on three categories:
- Reliability of flights
- Payment behaviour for compensation
- Customer satisfaction
The airlines are rated between 1 and 5 for each category (1 being the lowest and 5 the highest) for an overall score out of 5. In 2025, Finnair was named the worst airline in Europe, followed by Vueling and Ryanair to round out the worst three. On the opposite end of the ranking, Iberia, Eurowings and Discover Airlines were among the best airlines.
Dutch airline named among worst in Europe
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, the flag carrier of the Netherlands, has found itself in fifth place for the ranking of worst airlines in Europe with an overall score of 2,72 out of a possible 5. The category in which the Dutch airline performed the worst was reliability, which analyses delays and cancellation figures of the airline’s flights, earning a low score of 2.
Worker shortages and threats of strikes by KLM staff could part of the reason for a dip in reliability. Higher costs as Dutch airports such as Schiphol raise their rates could also have an impact on the overall score for the airline.
Customer satisfaction was also a low point for KLM, with a score of just 2,15. Where the airline lifted its score was in the category of payment behaviour (4 out of 5), giving passengers compensation quickly and efficiently.
10 worst airlines in Europe
In all, here are Europe’s worst airlines for 2025:
- Finnair (2,48)
- Vueling (2,52)
- Ryanair (2,58)
- easyJet (2,68)
- KLM (2,72)
- British Airways (2,72)
- Wizz Air (2,72)
- Condor (2,72)
- SWISS International Air Lines AG (2,76)
- Turkish Airlines (2,8)
For more information about the study and to see the full ranking, visit the Flightright website.
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Editor for the Netherlands at IamExpat Media. Simone studied Genetics and Zoology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa before moving to the Netherlands, where she has been working as a writer and editor since 2022. One thing she loves more than creating content is consuming it, mainly by reading books by the dozen. Other than being a book dragon, she is also a nature lover and enjoys hiking and animal training. Read more