Ten volunteers evaluated the performance of four currently available manikins: Airway Management Trainer, Airway Trainer, Airsim and Bill 1 as simulators for the 16 procedures described in the Difficult Airway Society Guidelines (DAS techniques) and eight other advanced airway techniques (non-DAS techniques), by scoring and ranking each manikin and procedure. Manikin performance was unequal (p < 0.0001 for both SCORE and RANK data for both DAS and non-DAS techniques). Post hoc analysis ranked the manikins for DAS techniques as: 1st Laerdal, 2nd Trucorp, 3rd equal VBM and Ambu. For non-DAS techniques, the ranking was: 1st equal Laerdal and Trucorp, 3rd equal VBM and Ambu. The power to discriminate for individual procedures was considerably lower but for 15 of 16 DAS techniques and 6 of 8 non-DAS techniques, manikin performance differed significantly. Post hoc tests showed significant performance differences between individual manikins for 10 DAS procedures, with the Laerdal manikin performing best.