The world's best airport: Qatar's Doha International Airport has landed top of the pile. Photo / Levi Meir Clancy, Unsplash
The world's best airport: Qatar's Doha International Airport has landed top of the pile. Photo / Levi Meir Clancy, Unsplash
Doha Hamad International Airport has been crowned the world’s best airport for 2024.
Airports are rarely the highlight of a journey.
As a travel hub, their job is to connect you from A to B; the less time spent on the runway the better.
But for one night of the year, it’s about the journey and that’s the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2024, or as they like to call themselves: “The Oscars of the airport industry”.
Like the real academy Awards, there has been mile-high drama. Singapore’s Changi Airport, which took gold in the 2023 rankings, was knocked off the top spot to second place.
Third place went to Seoul’s Incheon Airport, followed by two Tokyo airports, Haneda and Narita in fourth and fifth place respectively. The top 10 was rounded out by Paris’ Charles de Gaulle, which is expecting Olympic traffic of up to 800,000 inbound tourists.
However, it was the Qatari airport that landed the top spot in 2024, just a decade after its first departure.
Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, is a major travel hub. But the coronavirus pandemic pushed passenger traffic at the airport down by an unprecedented 70 per cent last year. Photo / AP
“This year, Hamad International Airport celebrates its milestone 10th year of operations and we are truly honoured that passengers have voted us Best Airport in the World for a third time,” said Badr Al Meer, Qatar Airways Group chief executive.
The airport also landed special awards for best airport shopping and beat fierce competition from the likes of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh to be named best Middle East travel hub for the second consecutive time.
The awards have been charting the rise of the world’s best airports since 1989, compiling the rankings from passenger reviews of 597 airports worldwide.
Auckland Airport, meanwhile, soared to 45 in the rankings, up six places on last year.
It was not enough to land any special plaudits, though. Melbourne Airport was named the “Best Airport in the Australia and Pacific Region” and Perth was honoured for the “Best Airport Staff” in Australasia and South Pacific.
Japan’s Okinawa Airport made the most dramatic climb, soaring 108 places to enter the top 100 airports. The 91st ranked airport OKA is one of Japan’s southwest airports that was recently earmarked for a share of ¥35 billion ($390 million) in upgrades.
The biggest plunge in this year’s table was Cologne/Bonn airport. The airport which used to serve the old capital of West Germany has seen better days, falling 33 places from 56 to 89. It was one of many airports across the country hit by ongoing strike actions.
