#AfriTravel: Cape Town international voted best in Africa as SA regional airports clean up

Source: Traveller 24, 15/03/2017

Cape Town - Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has not only been
voted the best in Africa at the 2017 Skytrax World Airport Awards -
but the airport which recently facilitated its highest volume of
passengers in 2016 in excess of 10m passengers has managed to climb
three spots higher than last year from 22nd to 19th in the top 100
list.


The awards held in Amsterdam on Wednesday March 14 are among the most
prestigious accolades in the aviation industry - seeing Cape Town
International Airport clinching 19th spot in The World’s Top 100
Airports - 2017.


Minister of Economic Opportunities in Western Cape Alan Winde
congratulated CTIA saying the Skytrax World Airport Awards are the
benchmark for excellence in aviation.


Durban King Shaka retained the same ranking at 35th spot in the top
100 Airports list and was also voted the best Regional airport in
Africa.


King Shaka which also saw record breaking arrivals in 2016 was voted
the 6th best Regional Airport for 2017 with Japan Centrair Nagoya
clinching top Regional airport spot. Three of SA other regional
airports also featured in the list with East London ranked 2nd Port
Elizabeth ranked 3rd and Bloemfontein ranked 4th - boding well for
domestic travel all round.


Johannesburg come in at 37th position in the top 100 airports list
overall slipping some seven spots when compared to last year ranking.
But it ranks considerably better than the US’s equally busy JFK
Airport which came in at 67th position in this year list.


These awards are significant because they are based on customer
satisfaction as voted by travellers - The 2017 Awards are in fact
based on 13.82 million airport survey questionnaires completed by 105
different nationalities of airline customers during the survey
period.


I would like to commend Deon Cloete and the CTIA team for the great
work they are doing in contributing to the growth of the tourism
sector says Winde.


According to Winde the CTIA is also a partner in the Cape Town Air
Access initiative which has landed seven new routes and facilitated
ten route expansions for our region, since its launch in 2015.


This has increased capacity at CTIA by over 600 000 seats and
generated over R3 billion in tourism spend for the Western Cape. In
2016 CTIA also achieved a major milestone when they reached the 10
million passenger per year mark. These trends speak to CTIA as a
world-class airport which is setting the standard for customer service
says Winde.


The world top 20 airports according to Skytrax for 2017 (2016 ranking) :
1 Singapore Changi (1)
2 Tokyo Intl Haneda (4)
3 Incheon Intl Airport (2)