Newcastle airport has been ranked joint third in the country with London Heathrow as Britain’s third best airport. The survey conducted by The Telegraph rated Britain’s airports from best to worst using 16 categories. They used a combination of Twitter surveys and data on delays and the destinations served.
Not only did the survey find that 86.6% of flights that leave Newcastle airport are on time, the average delay time was only 8 minutes. It also offers the cheapest journey to the city centre than other airports and a more reasonable ‘kiss-and-drop charge’ at £4 for £10 minutes.
The airport gained points for having a good ratio of food outlets to passengers, and was rated highly for the number of power outlets around the terminal. One of the downsides to the airport is that it is still one of the the few that does not offer water refill stations.
The winner was London City Airport, this small London airport now serves 40 destinations including Florence and the Greek islands, it also gained points for free unlimited Wi-Fi and mobile power outlets. Gatwick came in at second place and scored highly for destinations served and lack of flight cancellations, but fell short for the high price of the Gatwick Express and low number of restaurants.
Here is the list in full:
1. London City
2. Gatwick
3. Heathrow and Newcastle
4. East Midlands
5. Luton
7. Birmingham
8. Liverpool
9. Edinburgh
10 Aberdeen
11 Manchester
12. Stanstead
13. Glasgow
14. Belfast International
15. Bristol and Leeds Bradford
Newcastle’s closest competitor Leeds Bradford came in joint bottom with Bristol. The data obtained from the CAA showed that 2.28% of flights at Leeds Bradford were cancelled last year, hugely contributing to its poor rankings.
The survey wanted to reflect the passenger experience, rather than just the size of the airport, and were ranked on data obtained from the CAA including percentage of flights on time in 2021, average delays and percentage of flights cancelled. As well as things such as, total destinations served and Wi-Fi access. Bonus points were issued for, mobile charging facilities, drinking water fountains and refill stations, and a five star hotel within a two-mile radius.
Source: Newcastle Chronicle