What makes an airport great? A good mix of shops, restaurants and bars? A low number of delays? A pretty sweet luxury offering? Low carbon emissions? With so many factors to evaluate, it’s hard to judge which airport is the world’s best – but it’s okay, because we’ve got the Air Transport Awards to tell us!
The accolades were announced at a prestigious ceremony in Greece, organised by Hermes, Air Transport News and a bunch of industry bodies like Airports Council International and the International Air Transport Association.
The winners were determined by the votes of more than 4,000 industry executives and Air Transport News readers. For the fourth year in a row, the industry awards named iGA Istanbul Airport as the best in the world. Given that it’s only been open for five years, that is quite impressive.
‘In order to offer our guests a pleasant travel experience, we set higher standards for ourselves in terms of efficiency, sustainability, innovation and passenger satisfaction,’ said the airport’s acting CEO Selahattin Bilgen, according to Daily Sabah.
Kostas Iastrou, general director and CEO of Air Transport News said the airport’s resilience had helped it rapidly return to pre-pandemic numbers and that the award reflects the dedicated work of all the airport’s staff.
Other winners included Indian flight operator IndiGo, which won best airline, Singaporean operator Scoot which won best budget airline, and International Airlines Group which won eco-airline of the year, according to Aviation Week.
This award is not to be confused with the annual SkyTrax ranking of the world’s best airports, which you can almost guarantee will be won by Sinapore’s Changi Airport (a place so fun it has its own list of things to do on Time Out).
While we’re on the subject of airports, these are all the strikes at European airports you need to watch out for right now.
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