Heathrow ‘99th best airport in the world’
31.03.11
Heathrow Airport was ranked 99th in a 'confidential ranking' of 146 major airports around the world, below Calcutta, Moscow, Athens and even Humberside Airport, with passengers complaining of long security queues and poor ‘ambience’. The Times newspaper also reports that, despite decades of innovation in air travel, it now takes about 23 minutes longer to fly from Heathrow to Paris that it did in 1979.
The newspaper published figures from Eurocontrol, the European air traffic regulator, which show that Heathrow’s average delay per flight has quadrupled over the past decade, rising from three to 12 minutes between 1998 and 2009. The numbers suggest the airport is struggling to cope with its packed schedules, something airline executives have repeatedly complained about. The airport runs at 98 percent capacity and handles 66 million passengers a year. There is only a 2 percent leeway to cope with problems.
A BAA spokesman told the Daily Mail the comparison with smaller airports was ‘out of context’. adding: ‘You wouldn’t compare McDonald’s with Claridges and then complain one is much more expensive. So ranking tiny airports alongside Heathrow is utter nonsense. When compared like-for-like, Heathrow outperforms every European hub airport, bar Amsterdam. '
'Many government-owned Asian airports are run at a loss, which is why there isn’t one single major European airport in the top half of the survey.’ The spokesman added that BAA was spending £1billion a year on improvements at the airport. ‘But we have to accept running at 98 percent capacity will continue to knock our resilience.'
The survey did, however, also show that Heathrow has overtaken Paris, Madrid and Frankfurt, and ranked higher than Gatwick and Stansted. According to the table, Singapore Changi, Seoul Incheon, Hong Kong International, Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates and China’s Beijing Capital, Shanghai’s Pu Dengare are the best airports in the world.
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