Best and worst airports of 2023 revealed
Three of the worst 20 ranked global airports are in the United Kingdom
AirHelp, an air passenger rights organisation, has released the ratings of all airports and airlines around the world in its annual comprehensive AirHelp Score.
The top three were Muscat International Airport in Oman (8.54 points), Recife/Guararapes–Gilberto Freyre International Airport in Brazil (8.49 points), and Cape Town International Airport in South Africa (8.48 points).
Muscat is a new entry for 2023, scoring an average of 8.7 points across the categories of punctuality, customer opinions, and food and shops.
European airports fared very poorly in this year’s ranking: of the 194 airports assessed, only nine airports in Europe made it into the top 50 in this year’s ranking, with London City emerging as the best UK airport, in 58th place.
With an overall score of 8.04 points, Spain’s Bilbao Airport fares in 21st place, making it Europe’s best airport in 2023. The continent’s second best ranking goes to Helsinki Vantaa Airport in Finland with 8.01 points. Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport in Poland comes in at third place in Europe with 8.00 points, rising from 75th in 2022 to 28th place in the global ranking this year.
Both across Europe and the overall global ranking, British airports performed poorly again this year. With an overall score of 6.48 points, London Gatwick is Europe’s second-worst airport and also the third worst in the world. This is a result of the airport scoring exceptionally low when looking at flight punctuality, with only 5.5 points.
Just ahead in the ranking are Manchester Airport and Bristol Airport at 183rd (6.75 points) and 180th (6.81 points) respectively. London Heathrow comes in at 163rd place with a score of 6.99, dropping by 51 positions since 2022.
Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of AirHelp said: “Our goal at AirHelp is not only to educate passengers about their rights and help them enforce them in the event of flight disruptions, but also ensure they have an all-round satisfying flight experience. Over the past 10 years, we have helped two million passengers get paid compensation for delayed or cancelled flights and in instances of denied boarding, while also collecting these never-seen-before statistics on airlines and airports.
“The AirHelp Score uses data to rate airlines and airports across several factors, looking beyond only punctuality or customer feedback. This is because we know that passengers care about different things when they fly and we want the results of the AirHelp Score to reflect which airlines and airports offer the best overall passenger experience.”