Malta rated Europe's 4th best airport
 

According to the Airports Council International ASQ survey published on 16 Feb, the top 5 airports in Europe were

1 - Keflavik
2 - Zurich
3 - Oporto
4 - Malta
5 - Southampton

Well done Malta and also Southampton, for showing that small can be beautiful.

They only published the top 5.

Best worldwide

BEST AIRPORTS WORLDWIDE
1) Incheon (ICN) 2) Singapore (SIN) 3) Hong Kong (HKG) 4) Beijing (PEK) 5) Hyderabad (HYD)

full press release

http://www.airports.org/aci/aci/file...ards_final.pdf

LHR is most likely 6th......


*can't decide on smiley*

The Airports council International being a subscription body for Airport operators. Psuedo awards for their own membership. Presumably it makes the winning members buy a table at the award ceremony they organise for themselves?

Lovely as it is, what are they the top 5 airports in, other than fairly sleepy backwaters in global aviation terms?

TightSlot
 

At the risk of incurring the wrath of a Mod.!!!!!

Heathrow is west of London near where the A30 and the A4 meet.

Sorry,just could'nt resist this one.
With tongue in cheek etc.....

OPF

According to the press release, the airports were judged on these factors:

They must have had some very eager survey compilers at Southampton, or they were just very lucky not to have encountered me. I would have scored their survey questions as follows:

My score for Southampton
the ambience of the airport......2 out of 10 (glorified tin shed)
cleanliness of the terminal........5 out of 10 (tidy but worn)
comfort of the waiting areas.....3 out of 10 (too few seats for pax)
availability of washrooms..........8 out of 10 (sufficient)
cleanliness of washrooms..........5 out of 10 (far from sparkling)
courtesy and helpfulness of the airport staff..5(OK but most disinterested)
business lounges.....................4 out of 10 (just one small one)
ease of making connections......3 out of 10 (no airside transfers)
passport/ID inspection experience..9 o/o 10 (ppts OK but security surly)
good shopping facilities............1 out of 10 (tiny shop; grim restaurant - admittedly it's being reburbished, but service and quality are poor)

As far as LHR is concerned, I don't think the survey will have recorded minus scores....!

What do us forum users think are the real best airports, though?

Amusing scores, ConstantFlyer. It reads just like it's a BAA plc airport. :rolleyes:

Oh, it is ... :}

Small? There's a place in South Africa that's neat and easy and chilled out but big? You know, the ghastly Johannesburg International is getting really much better. When they have finished their building works for some football game that's going to be played there, I think their international terminal will score highly. Last August, it beat LHR T5 with ease.

My score for Malta

the ambience of the airport......8 out of 10 (light and airy)
cleanliness of the terminal........9 out of 10 (always clean)
comfort of the waiting areas.....9 out of 10 (plenty of seats for pax)
availability of washrooms..........8 out of 10 (sufficient)
cleanliness of washrooms..........9 out of 10 (always clean)
courtesy and helpfulness of the airport staff...(Typically Maltese, helpful & friendly)
business lounges.....................9 out of 10 (brand new lounge in 2009, light and airy, plenty of space, free internet, free food, good arrivals lounge)
ease of making connections......8 out of 10 (never done it, but it looks well organised)
passport/ID inspection experience..9 o/o 10 (fast and efficient)
good shopping facilities............6 out of 10 (limited range of shops, but high quality and reasonable value, good eating places)

As a regular user, the MIA experience is fast and generally pain free.

One other user on here recalled how he arrived at -10 mins (due to an incident) and still made the flight.

I usually allow an hour and have plenty of time to use the lounge before boarding.

#4 seems fair enough to me, also pleased to see ZRH at #2, an excellent airport I use regularly.

@ Constantflyer Some of us remember when it was one!!

Sufficient
 

Both F3G and ConstantFlyer rate 8 out of 10 as "sufficient".
I would have said that 8 out 10 is "good" but now I think I am missing something in terms of English definition.

Given a rate from 0 to 10 how do you define a number rate (or a set of numbers) in words?
I mean:
- anything below 5 (therefore 0 to 4) is "insufficient"
- 5 is "average"
- 6 is "sufficient"
- 7 is "fair"
and so on.
The above is just an example, not really sure that 7 and fair can go together :E

How do you do it?
Thank you.

Ciao
Ulxima

Fair point Ulxima.

I cut and pasted Constant Travellers score table and didn't edit the descriptor.

They always say that when using a Likert scale (e.g. 1-10) it is best not to use narrative beyond 1 = lower, 1 - higher, or words to that effect.

You have just lucidly demonstrated why.

Ciao ciao (usually said this way on the islands!)

yea, 6th last!

Hard to take these surveys totally seriously as they are hardly rigourous and depend on passengers who have only been to half a dozen airports in their life so don't know what to compare with. People may also grade depending on how their journey to the airport went and that is not something that can be affected by the airport itself. Very easy to rubbish these surveys. Unless LHR comes bottom when it should be published in Nature :) Suspect also that in this grade-inflation world we now live in that a 9 is an average score and you need a 10* if you want to impress.

I cannot think of any airport in the world that I would score more than a 7/10 on anything, but then when I were a lad a C grade was something to be proud of.......

Scumbag

This survey has very high face validity.

I think ZRH and MLA are great airports.

Therefore the survey must be true.

I'm partial to Schiphol but I'm biased and it's the closest major airport in the country to me :ok: Heathrow I used to like very much, but I haven't been there in a while so perhaps it's changed. In any event I preferred T4 to the others which felt awfully cramped.

Ashamed to say I don't remember Malta at all :ugh:

Gatwick, Birmingham, Southampton - nondescript :rolleyes:

Exeter and Bristol - cute little things that do their best really hard. I have to try extra to not be a snob and compare them with the bigger operations out there :\

Hong Kong is, in my view, awesome! :D Free wifi all over the place! Ok, it didn't always work, but that was probably due to my clapped out laptop.

Manila I like very much in a different way. It's not slick like I perhaps expect airports in Europe to be, but everyone's very friendly (sometimes to a fault).

JFK felt like a graveyard. Or maybe it's always like that on 1st April? :( Seriously, it was almost as though there were half a dozen pax at check-in and security, and then everyone just disappeared. And then I got teased by the security people just before the gate because of my accent (who knew the way I pronounce 'aluminium' could cause such hilarity?).

Newark - unfriendly ladies working at the desk just after baggage-pickup. And it felt like you had to walk forever to get there. Probably no longer than anywhere else, but for some reason it felt that way.

Detroit - big, dark, noisy (I'd just got off a flight from AMS and was knackered :} ). But that indoor train thingy taking you to the more distant gates was FUN :E

Uh, I could go on but dinner's nearly ready ;) On balance I'd say my 'favourite' is a toss-up between Schiphol and Hong Kong :ok:

I forgot to mention that MLA also has separate facilities for smokers!!

I know I'm one of the 'dirty people', but it does reduce stress.

And they offer that facility at Dulles as well.

Ipse Dixit :E

However I agree with you on ZRH. I like it too.
Never been in MLA but I trust what you wrote.

Ciao ciao then (it is also widely used on the mainland :))
Ulxima

...and HKG, AMS, GOT, ARN, ZRH, BSL, SHA, PVG, PEK, etc.

I saw these separate areas for the first time at Changi in late nineties but I am not sure they have been the first.

Ciao
Ulxima