The best airports in the world ranked – and number one is in Europe

Your idea of the best airport in the world might look very different to mine.

Maybe you think the best part about travelling abroad is the duty-free shopping? Maybe you care more about how far away you are from the city centre? Or maybe you judge an airport on the number of destinations it serves directly?

Thankfully for us, Consumer Choice Center has compiled a new edition of the World Consumer Airport Index that takes all of the above, and more, into account, to reveal the very best airports around the globe.

Split into two rankings – one for those with more than 47.2 million passengers per year, and one serving below that number – the index also looks at whether or not a hub has direct access to the metro or national rail services, how easy the connections are between gates and terminals, the choice of airlines available, the average delays, and whether or not there is a hotel in it.

Airports are also awarded bonus points if security waiting times are under three minutes, and if they do not have nighttime curfews.

The result? Drum roll, please…

Both the best large and small airports around the world globally are in Europe, with Spain’s Barcelona-El Prat Josep Tarradellas Airport topping the chart for the former, and Germany’s Düsseldorf Airport for the latter.

Both of these airports performed well on security waiting times, with passengers passing through Barcelona waiting just three minutes, while in Düsseldorf, processing is almost instantaneous.

The worst airports – and why

Among the large airports, the worst-ranked include Antalya, Guangzhou Baiyun and Frankfurt.

For smaller airports, those who fared poorly include Seoul Gimpo, Punta Cana, and London Stansted.

These airports all have problems in common, including extreme distances from city centres, no ride-hailing options separate from taxi companies, poor access to railway services, long security wait times and a high percentage of average delays.