AirHelp Score 2022: British Airports have much room for improvement

• AirHelp, the world's largest air passenger rights organisation, publishes the annual AirHelp Score, which ranks airports and airlines

• The best airports in Europe are located in Spain, Austria and Italy

• Four of the worst 10 ranked airports are located in England

London, December 12, 2022 – After a two-year corona break, AirHelp (www.airhelp.com), the world's largest air passenger rights organisation, has rated all airports and airlines around the world in the comprehensive AirHelp Score. European airports in particular fared very poorly in this year's ranking: of the 151 airports assessed, only five airports in Europe made it into the top 50, with Liverpool John Lennon Airport emerging as the first UK airport, in 36th place.

Europe's best airports are in Spain

For the AirHelp Score, airports were evaluated in the categories of punctuality, customer opinions and food and stores. With an overall score of 8.25 points, Spain's Madrid-Barajas Airport makes it to 12th place, making it Europe's best airport in 2022. Second place in Europe also goes to Spain: With 8.05 points, Bilbao also secures a place on the podium - in terms of punctuality, the Basque airport is even 0.13 points ahead of Madrid (8.39 and 8.26 points, respectively). In terms of customer opinions (8.19 and 7.81 points, respectively) and the range of food and stores (8.30 and 7.28 points, respectively), however, Spain's capital just takes the lead. Bilbao ranks 24th in the global rankings.

The third-best airport in Europe, with a score of 7.79, is Vienna-Schwechat Airport, Austria's largest and best-known airport. In the overall ranking, the Austrian airport only achieves 44th place. Italy's Milan Linate Airport (49th place with 7.74 points) and Norway's Bergen Airport (50th place with 7.72 points) only just make it into the global top 50, placing fourth and fifth in the European comparison.

Great Britain has the worst airports in Europe

Not only in the European, but also in the overall global ranking, British airports perform particularly poorly: four of the 10 worst airports are located in Great Britain, specifically all in England. With an overall score of 6.48, London Luton Airport is Europe's worst airport and also the third worst in the world. Just ahead are Antalya Airport (6.50 points) and the three other English airports Bristol Airport (6.54 points), Manchester Airport (6.56 points) and London Gatwick Airport (6.64 points). Elsewhere in the UK, Scotland’s Edinburgh Airport comes in 127th out of 151 airports, while Belfast Airport is ranked 80th.

"Our goal at AirHelp is not only to educate passengers about their rights and help them enforce them in the event of delays and cancellations. But rather, we want to ensure that passengers have an  all-round satisfying flight experience. AirHelp has one of the most reliable and accurate collections of flight data in the world. This allows us to provide holiday makers and business travellers with an in-depth look at how airlines and airports are performing. At the same time, the AirHelp Score is a useful tool for companies to assess their position and identify areas for improvement, as it is the passengers’ experience that is the most important here." explains Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of AirHelp.

About the AirHelp Score

The AirHelp Score is a ranking of the best and worst airlines and airports in the world. AirHelp has been publishing the AirHelp Score since 2015 (with a break during the pandemic) to help passengers better plan their flights. The Score allows passengers to see what treatment they can expect from airlines and airports based on data. To calculate the AirHelp Score, multiple data sources and factors are combined to give passengers a comprehensive picture of how an airline or airport is performing. The airline score is based on three factors: on-time performance, customer opinions and complaint handling. These are weighted equally. The rating of airports is also based on three factors: punctuality, customer opinions, and food and business. Here, punctuality is the biggest factor at 60 percent. To determine the results, data from January 1 to October 31 was analysed and passengers were asked about their most recently used airlines and airports.

About AirHelp

AirHelp is the world's largest air passenger rights organisation. Since its founding in 2013, the company has helped travellers enforce compensation for delayed or cancelled flights, as well as in the event of denied boarding. In addition, AirHelp takes legal and political action to further strengthen the rights of air passengers worldwide. More information about AirHelp can be found at: https://www.airhelp.com/en-gb/