Every four years, all nations of the world gather to play the world’s most watched sporting event – the World Cup. The next World Cup will be in Brazil in 2014.

As I sat on a recent flight on Kenya Airways, I thought to myself – what is THE best airline in the world and what would the criteria be? It’s certainly not Kenya Airways – but what if people from Nairobi believe it is?

There are so many factors to take into account:
– Elite status benefits
– Availability of award tickets
– In flight entertainment
– Business / First class product
– Quality of meals
– Economy product
– economical ticket fares

Every person has their own criteria when they judge whether a particular airline suits their needs, so rather than debate, I decided it’s time to make all the airlines go against each other in the Airline World Cup 2011 and let the readers decide based on their own preferences.

The rules are simple – there are seven qualifying regions to get to our pool of 32 airlines for the tournament: Africa, Middle Eastern, Asia, North America / Canada / Mexico, South America, Oceania, and Europe.

Each region, similar to World Cup qualifying, has a certain amount of slots available to them based on who you, the dedicated readers of MilesQuest, vote for.

Africa: 1
Middle Eastern: 3
Asia: 6
North America / Canada / Mexico: 6
South America: 2
Oceania: 1
Europe: 13

I will post a region with the qualifying airlines and through your votes, the winners of each region will advance to the tournament where they will battle each other in single elimination until we reach our winner of the Airline World Cup 2011.

Let the games begin!