A First Look at What You Missed at The 2024 Cranky Network Awards – Cranky Flier

Last week I put on the 2024 Cranky Network Awards presented by Oakland International Airport with Courtney Miller from Visual Approach, as you probably know. It was a great night where we honored the best in airline network planning, but it was also a night of fun, joking, and roasting. Though we no longer stream the awards, we don’t want to deprive you completely of all the fun, so here’s some of what you missed.

Even without streaming, we did hire a videographer to put together shortened versions and highlight reels for us to share. That takes time, so right now I only have the short highlight reel ready. I will post the more substantive one later with actual acceptance speeches and all that when it’s finished, but for now…

What about the winners? You don’t need to wait for the longer version to find that out. This was posted on Twitter/X in real time, but for those who missed it, here is the lineup of well-deserving winners:

• Sexiest New Route – Short-Haul
  • JetBlue for Los Angeles to Nassau
• Sexiest New Route – Long-Haul (presented by Airbus)
  • Air Transat for Montréal to Marrakech
• Route Victory Award
  • American for its success on Miami – Beef Island/Tortola
• Most Promising New Partnership (presented by Pittsburgh International Airport)
  • Alaska for its acquisition of Hawaiian
• All-Season All-Star (presented by Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport)
  • United for finding places in Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand for its widebodies in winter
• Best Airport Partner
  • Paul Forde from Winnipeg Airports Authority
• Calculated Risk Award
  • American for its focus on the southern half of the US
• Best New Destination
  • Tulum, split between Air Canada, American, Delta, JetBlue, United, and Spirit (it will eventually go there)
• Best Aircraft-Enabled Opportunity
  • Alaska for Anchorage to New York/JFK on the 737-8 MAX
• Network Victory Award (presented by Boeing)
  • Delta for its success in the Boston hub
• Most Clever Flight Number
  • Flair for F8 1512 marking the exact difference in feet between the departure gate in Calgary and the arrival gate in Las Vegas
• Most Improved Network (presented by Oakland International Airport)
  • United for its big Pacific expansion

You probably want to see more than just the winners in print, right? Of course you do. So we’ve pulled out some of the video productions we create to show in between awards… for your viewing pleasure.

There are several big airlines that don’t fly to Oakland. Could it be that they don’t know where Oakland is? We decided it was time to go back to school with a little Oakland 101.

Of course, we have the annual Airlines We Lost 2023 video. I post about those airlines here at the end of each year, but we’ve begun putting them in video form to show during the awards show, because what’s an awards show without the “in memoriam” segment?

Back in 2022, we started putting together “Profiles in Courage” to poke a little fun at some of the big events of the previous year. This year, we continue the tradition.

First up, we have Profiles in Courage – Judge Sorokin, the man who ended the JetBlue/American Northeast Alliance.

Then we followed that one with Delta’s courageous decision to bring in a true leader to drive the airline to victory with Profiles in Courage – Delta Air Lines.

You can get a sense of just how much fun we have at this thing. And nobody is spared from the jokes, not even me. I mean, just look at what I’m wearing…

Though we may have a lot of fun with this, we take the awards themselves very seriously and put a lot of effort into picking those winners. Congratulations to all!

Next year, we’re back in Phoenix for the 2025 Cranky Network Awards presented by Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The planning has already begun….