In the world of air travel, passengers often complain significantly more about the time they spend waiting around at the airport than the time they spend in the air. While this may seem counterintuitive, as passengers can move freely around the terminal but are confined to small seats during their time at an airport, there are some reasons why this would make sense.
For starters, passengers will have to spend roughly the same amount of time in the skies, regardless of whether their flight encounters some kind of major operational delay. Furthermore, passengers will almost always feel like they are making some form of progress towards their final destination while in the air, while sitting in airports is often just seen as wasted time.
For short-haul journeys, passengers may spend significantly more time waiting around airports than they do in the air. On longer-haul journeys or those with layovers, spending time in airports remains an essential part of a passenger’s journey. Despite all of this, there are some ways for airports to improve their facilities to the point where passenger complaints are significantly reduced.
Passengers have several criteria which they use to differentiate between better and worse airports
Several different industry research firms, such as Skytrax and Conde Nest Traveler, publish global rankings of the world’s best airports, which are the amalgamation of dozens of different studies and consumer insight surveys. Furthermore, for airlines that operate major hub airports
at some of these facilities, the importance of having a highly-rated home base cannot be understated.
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Therefore, airlines will invest extensively in improving the facilities at their home bases, especially in the case of large intercontinental airlines which derive a massive portion of their passenger traffic from connecting travelers. Let’s take a deeper look at what factors make passengers rank airports higher than others.
Efficiency and ease of transport tend to be some of the biggest sources of passenger complaints
Across the board, most passengers are consistently bothered by issues that relate to efficiency and ease of transportation to and from an airport, as well as within the facility itself. This can be broken down into external and internal factors, some of which are detailed in the table below:
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External Factors: |
Internal Factors: |
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As one can immediately tell, the majority of these factors relate to extra time that passengers either spend waiting around or time that they have lost due to reasons like operational delays or confusion. Overwhelmingly, these factors guide customer opinions on airports, and they are especially important for those facilities which service an important portion of connecting traffic.
Photo: EQRoy | Shutterstock
When airports can consistently deliver on having manageable lines, limited wait times, and low transfer times either between gates or between terminals, they can make a stronger case for becoming a major hub for connecting traffic.
Furthermore, minimizing operational delays is essential for an airline operating a hub, as ensuring that passengers make their connections efficiently is a crucial element of the hub-and-spoke model.
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Service factors are also an important piece of the puzzle
Airport staff also play a key role in helping an airport improve its rating with passengers, and travelers are especially quick to criticize negative reactions by airport staff during delays.
A study examined by The Miami Herald concluded that some of the most common complaints involved the mishandling of passenger property, as well as perceived rude attitudes exhibited by customer service and other airport representatives. Interestingly, many passengers also complained when expedited security programs like TSA PreCheck or Clear were either unavailable or malfunctioned.
Photo: Hamad International Airport
So, what puts an airport over the edge?
There are some elements that separate a good airport from one of the world’s best. At the end of the day, simply not having delays and getting through security quickly is not going to be good enough to get onto some of the world’s airport leaderboards. Let’s take a deeper look at the world’s top ten airports from SkyTrax in 2024, which are as follows:
- Doha Hamad International Airport (DOH)
- Singapore Changi International Airport (SIN)
- Seoul Incheon International Airport (ICN)
- Tokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)
- Tokyo Narita International Airport (NRT)
- Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)
- Dubai International Airport (DXB)
- Munich International Airport (MUC)
- Zurich International Airport (ZRH)
- Istanbul Airport (IST)
The first thing that we can note is that the vast majority of these airports are relatively new or have undergone extensive modifications to improve their facilities.
Not only are these airports designed with efficiency in mind, but they also do so with aesthetic considerations included, creating beautiful spaces in which passengers can truly relax and recharge before their flights.
But to put themselves over the top, some facilities even employ incredible elements that make airports attractions unto themselves. The New Jewel at Singapore Changi Airport is a good example of this phenomenon and currently stands as the world’s tallest indoor waterfall.
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