Seven airports from mainland China somehow make it onto list of world’s best
While seven out of 100 isn’t a terribly impressive number for China, it’s still more than you would expect
While Chinese airports are not generally known as the happiest or most efficient places on earth, a decent number of them were actually ranked among the world’s best this year.
Seven of the top 100 airports in Skytrax’s 2018 World Airport Awards are located in mainland China:
18) Shanghai Hongqiao
33) Beijing Capital
35) Haikou
38) Xi’an
60) Chengdu
81) Sanya
84) Shenzhen
While that number might be better than you’d expect, it’s still not great for a country with more than 200 civil airports. Hong Kong International Airport (4th) and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (15th) both placed higher than any airport in the mainland.
The 2018 World Airport Awards were based on 13.73 million customer nominations across 100 different nationalities with more than 500 airports across the world taking part.
The survey evaluates airports on a number of different factors, however, no airport in mainland China ranked in the top ten in the categories: best airports for shopping, cleanest airports, best airport staff service, best regional airports, best airport terminals, best airport dining experience, best transit airports, or best airports for baggage delivery.
The Pullman hotel in Guangzhou’s airport and Langham Place in Beijing were at least named among the world’s best airport hotels.
A big reason why Chinese airports are not more highly-regarded is the frequency of hellish flight delays. Back in 2016, a government survey found that a whopping one-third of Chinese flights are delayed, sometimes due to “bad weather,” and other times because of the PLA.
In 2015, a FlightStats report named Chinese airlines and airports as the world’s worst for punctuality. Among the 61 largest airports in the world, the seven worst performers for on-time departures were all mainland Chinese airports that year with our very own Shanghai Hongqiao and Pudong airports taking the bottom two spots.
Delays at airports around China have led to numerous nasty conflicts between impatient passengers and airline staff. In April 2016, angry passengers at an airport in Changsha were filmed slapping and throwing food at an airline employee due to their frustrations over a flight delay. Later in the year, an enraged flight captain urged his passengers to protest a flight delay by getting out of the plane and playing shuttlecock on the apron.
Despite these issues, China is moving at a record pace to build even more airports, aiming to add 136 new ones by 2025. Included among this number are a few so-called “mega airports” which are hoped to be more hassle-fee.
For instance, Beijing’s new airport will have 7 runways, handling 100 million passengers annually — who cares if the inside looks like a vagina. Meanwhile a 70 billion yuan international airport under construction in Chengdu will boast 6 runways and handle 90 million passengers each year.
