AIR Berlin has been named the world's best low-cost airline in a respected annual survey. The German airline, which recently began services from the George Best Belfast City Airport, swapped places with last year's winner, JetBlue Airways, while the UK's biggest low cost airline easyJet finished in third place.

The Skytrax survey canvassed the opinions of nearly five million airline passengers on a range of customer satisfaction criteria. Air Berlin was also named best low-cost airline in Europe, while easyJet was second and new Spanish airline Vueling was third.

"Low-cost travel will only become more popular, and that means more competition," said Joachim Hunold, Chief Executive of the winning airline.

"We always wanted to stand out from the rest with our high levels of customer service and that is starting to feed back to us from surveys such as Skytrax.

"We are really delighted to have gone one better than last year and scooped the worldwide award as well."

Last week British Airways was named ahead of Qantas and Cathay Pacific as the 2006 airline of the year.

Air Berlin began operating from the George Best Belfast City Airport to Stansted on May 2, making seven new destinations in central Europe more accessible as a result of its morning and evening weekday services. Single daily return services operate on Saturday and Sunday.

The move has opened up for the first time Air Berlin's onbound Europe-wide destinations from Stansted for Northern Ireland travellers. These include Dusseldorf, Berlin, Hanover, Leipzig, Nuremburg, Paderborn and Vienna.

Air Berlin's flights are low cost, but full service, offering customers free food and drinks, flight flexibility, air miles and baggage transfer for connecting travellers.