MaeenaIf you have been regularly following the news in the local dailies, you must have come across reports of statements by government officials about how wonderful the Kingdom's airports are or announcements of promises of how wonderful they soon will be. And with the generous budget that the government allocates to the running of our airports each year, you might feel that you have every reason to believe that such declarations are on the mark and our airports are of a world-class standard. As a frequent traveler, I have been following such news with interest for the past three decades. And while the news keeps getting updated from time to time over the years, I haven't noticed it reflected in an improvement in the quality of our airports, and in particular, King Abdul Aziz International Airport (KAIA) in Jeddah. But perhaps I have been simply too critical. And so it was with interest that I delved into the latest global rankings of airports by SKYTRAX, a UK-based research outfit that focuses on airlines and airports. The annual airport customer survey is respected for “clarity and independence, having no airport influence or bias. The World Airport Awards are the global benchmark of airport excellence and known in the travel industry as the Passenger's Choice Awards.” The company's 2012 awards were recently announced at an aviation expo in Vienna. The ratings cover a wide range of products or services that affect the flyer. According to SKYTRAX, the 2012 awards “are based on over 12.08 million passenger surveys completed by over 100 different nationalities during a nine-month period in 2011-2012 and covering more than 388 airports worldwide.” Various products and services were taken into account, such as ease of access to and from passenger terminals, immigration, restaurants, terminal design and comfort, seating facilities, cleanliness, staff attitude, and airport security and safety standards. While each of these products or services may fall under different jurisdictions, at the end of the day passengers form their impressions on the quality of the product and service delivered to them in that particular environment that we refer to as an airport. SKYTRAX uses “an internationally recognized evaluation system to assess the front-line quality standards across each airport's operations. SKYTRAX applies well established and recognized quality audit principles, which are designed so that all airport Quality Ranking Audits are conducted in a standardized and consistent manner.” In plain English, what they publish is close to the truth and nothing but. I thought that perhaps the 2012 SKYTRAX airport rankings would finally do justice to the claims by public service officials entrusted with running our airports; claims that have over a period of time appeared in one newspaper or the other. Not surprisingly, as I began reviewing the list I found none of the Kingdom's airports listed in the top 10. I figured with the stiff international competition, they may have just missed out. After all, top honors went to airports in Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Beijing respectively, airports renowned globally for passenger comfort and convenience. And so I looked into the next 20, and yet there were no winners among the Kingdom's airports. Abu Dhabi was there sitting smugly at position 18. Another UAE airport Dubai, trailed a few steps behind ranking 26th among the 388 airports surveyed. Bahrain was the third GCC airport on the list, winning the 58th slot. And so I kept going on. Qatar, another GCC country, managed a winner's slot with the airport in Doha grabbing the 63rd spot. Perhaps I missed something. I mean there were airports such as Helsinki (ranked 22nd), London's Stansted airport at 42nd, Guangzhou (52nd), Malta (60th), Hyderabad (77th) and yet none of our airports had appeared in the top 80! I went back to the list and reviewed each name carefully. Sure enough, there was no oversight. And so I continued perusing the remaining names, and while I found Muscat - another GCC airport - at position 89, none of the Kingdom's major airports were listed among the winners in the top 100 airports of the world. Had I access to the next 100 rankings, I would undoubtedly find Colombo and Bali somewhere in there. And so I ask myself. Do numbers lie? The author can be reached at [email protected] __
