Cape Town, OR Tambo ranked in top 10 best airports in the world

AirHelp has ranked Cape Town International Airport and OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg are amongst the top ten best airports in the world. Cape Town Airport sits in second place, while OR Tambo is in sixth place.

The survey considers different factors when ranking the airports. These include the on-time performance of each airport, passenger insight into the facilities and the experience of using the airports.

The ranking looked at factors from 1 May 2023 to 30th April 2024.

Cape Town Airport ranked second best in the world

The Cape Town International Airport received an 8.6 score for on-time performance. It received an 8.4 score for customer opinion, and 8.5 for food and shops, which gave the airport an overall score of 8.50.

Johannesburg OR Tambo gets the sixth position

Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport was ranked the sixth-best airport in the work. The airport received an 8.2 score for on-time performance, an 8.3 score for customer opinion, and an 8.4 score for food and shops. OR Tambo received an overall score of 8.29.

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Factors influencing ranking

According to AirHelp’s website, the company has over 4,000 airports on their database, and only 239 of the busiest airports in the world were ranked. On-time performance is one of the factors used to rank airports and it contributes 60% of the score. AirHelp’s database shows on-time flight departure and arrival statistics for every airport.

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The database counts any flight that arrived within 15 minutes of its published arrival time as an on-time flight. For the survey, AirHelp calculated how many flights were on time and expressed the number as a percentage. “The higher the score, the higher the percentage of on-time flights. For example, a score of 8.5 means 85% of flights were on time.”

The second factor that the survey takes into consideration is customer opinion, which is taken from a survey of travellers based on different factors such as airport staff, wait times, accessibility, and cleanliness. Customer opinion counts 20% of the final ranking of the best airports.

The final factor taken into consideration is food and shops within the airports. AirHelp uses a survey of travellers who have rated the shops and restaurants they have visited at the airports. This factor counts for 20% of the final score.