HYDERABAD: Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport has been ranked the world’s 8th best airport as per an international ranking curated by a website called Airhelp. RGIA was the only one from country to feature in the top 10 airport rankings.
Airhelp is a global air passenger rights expert that annually issues rankings of the world’s airports based on how they perform in passenger experience. The contending airports were gauged based on three criteria — ‘on-time performance’, ‘service quality’ and ‘food and shops’.
In the top 10 rankings, the Hamad International Airport in Doha came first with an overall score of 8.39. Hyderabad came close with an overall score of 8.27 points and bagged the 8th spot. The Delhi Airport was ranked 24, followed by Mumbai Airport at the 88th spot.
As per the rankings, Hyderabad scored a 7.8 on the criteria of ‘on-time performance’, which was the lowest score any of the top 10 airports had received. The criteria is arrived upon by calculating statistics of every airport on how punctual they were with regard to flying.
However, when it came to service quality, which was based on customer feedback on waiting times, cleanliness and customer service, Hyderabad airport scored a sweet 9 points, one of the highest scores bagged by any of the top 10 airports.
Only Athens International airport got a 9 on service quality. When it came to the criteria of ‘food and shops’ which was also based on customer ratings of their shopping experience at the airport, Hyderabad scored an 8.8, which was yet again one of the best amongst the top 10 airports.
Speaking about the significance of the ranking, Airhelp said: “Where we fly from affects our journey. When their travel doesn’t go as per the plan, we help air passengers to know certain things beforehand, so they can plan ahead and know what to expect the next time they fly.”
According to Airhelp, a weightage of about 60 per cent was given to the first criterion and 20 per cent each for the next two criteria. The rankings have been a mix of both statistical data and of surveys in which around 40,000 people from more than 40 countries participated.