While the "sexiness" of a given destination will vary depending on each individual's personal preferences, aviation blog "Cranky Flyer" founder Brett Snyder has been awarding that title to routes that both fill a specific travel need and make a great destination a little easier to reach.
Founded in 2021, the Cranky Network Awards have been taking place once a year to name the best in airline route planning and has increasingly been gaining recognition among industry insiders who look forward to seeing which routes will take different awards.
Related: This is what you see from above on a Spirit Airlines flight
Held in February, this year's ceremony named JetBlue Airways (JBLU) ' new Los Angeles to Nassau flight as the "sexiest" short-haul route and Air Transat's Montreal to Marrakech route as the top long-haul one.
This 'sexy' route fills a sunny void missing since 2018
The nominees, which were first drawn attention to by travel website The Points Guy, included Alaska Airlines' (ALK) Anchorage to San Diego and Delta's (DAL) Atlanta to Curaçao flights for short-haul as well as Delta's Atlanta to Nice, France and Lufthansa's (DLAKF) Munich to Seattle flights for long-haul.
More travel stories:
- A new travel term is taking over the internet (and reaching airlines and hotels)
- The 10 best airline stocks to buy now
- Airlines see a new kind of traveler at the front of the plane
As Snyder explained during the streamed awards ceremony, the goal is to present interesting new routes in a humorous way. He wants nominees to "worry less about winning the award" but to instead focus on "having a good time with your colleagues."
The Nassau route was chosen because the capital of the Bahamas is primarily a cruise ship destination that is often underserved by airlines.
"Other than Nassau, the Grand Canyon is the only Caribbean city with nonstop service from California," he said when announcing the winner. "Havana and Montego Bay were last flown from LAX in 2018 and nothing else has been flown in more than a decade."
Awards include Calculated Risk, Most Promising Partnership and Best New Destination
American Airlines (AAL) won the "Calculated Risk" category for its choice to focus on building hubs in the south of the U.S. while the "Most Promising Partnership" award was snagged by Alaska for the merger with Hawaiian Airlines (HA) . Tulum was the obvious choice as the "Best New Destination" since Mexican authorities just finished construction of the new Tulum Felipe Carrillo Puerto Airport in order to serve skyrocketing tourism popularity for what was once a sleepy Mayan village.
"We were the first to announce Tulum service so I will first claim this award," Delta's Global Manager of Network Planning Jeremy Vincent joked when accepting the prize. Along with Delta, airlines such as American, United Airlines (UAL) , JetBlue and Spirit Airlines (SAVE) all announced that they would launch new routes to the city this year (the latter's plans were derailed by a recall of the engines used in the plane slated for the flight.)
Other nominees for the top new destination category include American's new route to Mexico's Tijuana, United's new flight to Christchurch in New Zealand and Air Greenland's new flight to Nuuk — remote destinations like that can be a godsend for both people who live in those communities and those who have always dreamed of seeing Greenland but have been put off by how difficult it is to reach.
