The 2024–2025 period was a landmark for aviation, with record passenger volumes at major hubs. Vienna hit 31.7 million, its highest since 1955. Heathrow (83.85M), Dallas-Fort Worth (87.8M), Barcelona (55.03M), Lisbon (35.09M), Dublin (34.6M), and Warsaw (21.2M) all surpassed pre-pandemic figures.
This surge is testing an already strained system. Aircraft now average 14.6 years in age, and the EU’s new sustainability reporting rules are raising costs. Older fleets are less efficient, and regulatory red tape makes upgrades harder.
Despite this, some airports excelled. Tokyo Haneda topped large airports, followed by Suvarnabhumi and Singapore Changi. Dusseldorf led smaller airports, ahead of Copenhagen and Zurich, which dropped due to limited airline competition and strict night curfews.
Others lagged behind. London Gatwick and Stansted ranked lowest among large and small airports. Guangzhou, Istanbul, Mallorca, and Ezeiza also scored poorly due to weak transit links, ride-hailing limits, overcrowding, and frequent delays.
To better capture global airport performance, we’ve launched the first World Consumer Airport Index, building on the 2024 European edition by adding 20 international entries. This expanded version uses airport data, annual reports, online statistics, and our own research to provide a more comprehensive analysis.
We excluded unreliable metrics like passengers per lounge, jet bridge, and CBP clearance due to inconsistent reporting and distorted comparisons. Smaller lounges or infrastructure can skew scores unfairly, so we refined weights and introduced more nuance for borderline cases. New categories—night-time curfews and “other considerations”—help reflect airport-specific conditions. We also elevated average delays to a standalone category and added more data on security wait times.
Importantly, the index now includes two separate rankings: the 30 busiest airports (over 35 million passengers) and the 20 best smaller airports (35 million or fewer), recognizing the major differences in scale, staffing, and services between large and small venues.
Passenger numbers have surged, with an average annual growth rate of 128.23%. Ezeiza saw the lowest increase (69.22%), while Seoul Incheon led with 187.12%. Larger airports experienced sharper rises—London Heathrow jumped 183.85% (from 19.39M in 2021 to 83.85M in 2024), and Charles de Gaulle grew 150.7% (to 70.29M). Warsaw Chopin’s 92.6% increase was smaller but still significant.
Despite the influx, performance has improved: average delays dropped from 37.4% in 2024 to 19.3% in May 2025. Zurich’s security wait times rose slightly but remain better than in 2023. However, infrastructure issues still plague some hubs. Manchester’s 2024 power outage led to ongoing luggage problems. Berlin-Brandenburg continues to be hampered by its flawed construction history, and Frankfurt suffered system-wide failure from a dormouse-triggered power outage.
Airport policies also matter. U.S. airports like Atlanta, Dallas, and L.A. scored poorly due to limited infrastructure. Toronto Pearson’s rigid Night Flight Restriction Program, which pre-books 80% of slots, worsened its response to February 2025’s storms and crash delays. While weather is uncontrollable, inflexible planning isn’t.
There are several benefits to choosing one of the top five arrival or departure points in both rankings, such as more flight options, destinations, and airlines, less hassle getting to and from the airport, more restaurants, lounges, and shops, less congestion on aircraft bridges, more accessible connections to terminals, and less downtime due to delays and security checks.
RESEARCH NOTE
We strive to improve the quality of this index’s underlying data every year and aim to refine its methodology further. We often faced contradictory information and indicators measured differently by different airports. For instance, the number of destinations can refer to either average destinations throughout the year, charter destinations, or the total connected annually. We preferred to leave an entry empty where we found little or unreliable information (as was the case for some airports and average security times). We ask the index readers to acknowledge the difficulties in working with heterogeneous data and caution users to be aware of the underlying complications.
Furthermore, what makes an airport “good” for each individual can have a distinct qualitative element. Please remember, then, that our assessments are strictly quantitative and non-normative. We are not passing moral judgment on airports’ goodness and badness or downplaying personal experiences by ranking one airport lower than another. We are simply highlighting measurable conclusions based on the data available at the time of this index.
Research Director
Policy Fellow
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