Airports Council International (ACI) – the trade association of the world’s airports, today announced the winners of 2017 Airport Service Quality (ASQ) awards. Eleven airports from India were recognised in different categories.
Delhi & Mumbai were declared joint winners in the Over 40 million passenger’s category which saw a tie at second place between Beijing and Shanghai Pudong. Third place was occupied by Taipei airport. In the 15-25 million passenger category, Bengaluru Airport bagged second place while Chennai Airport was tied for the third with Surabaya, Indonesia. In the 5 – 15 million passenger category, Hyderabad bagged first position while Kochi, Kolkata and Pune shared the third spot. Lucknow bagged first place in the 2-5 million passengers category. Other Indian airports who made it to the list are Ahmedabad – for the most improved airport in Asia Pacific and Indore – for best airport in Asia Pacific under 2 million passengers per year category.
This is another year when the awards have seen winners being primarily from the Asia Pacific region.
In 2016, Mumbai & Delhi were tied at second spot with Singapore in the 40 million+ category. Hyderabad retained in position while Jaipur dropped out from the list.
ASQ claims to be the only worldwide programme to survey passengers at the airports on their day of travel. The measurement of service quality is based on 34 key parameters and 74 of world’s top 100 busiest airports are part of the ASQ network which covers surveys in 42 languages and 84 countries.
While this is good news for Airports Authority of India which has invested in newer terminals and is battling extreme congestion, the survey and its results surprise many – specially for airports like Chennai which has seen constant negative press and Pune which handles seven times more traffic than its terminal capacity. It is also unclear if the surveys at Delhi and Mumbai were terminal specific with the much criticised T1D and T1 respectively, being considered for the survey.
The awards will be handed over in September 2018 at Halifax Canada.
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