MADRID'S Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport has been named number one in Europe in terms of services, efficiency, complaints handling, and quality of its shops and restaurants, and Bilbao airport has come second.
Terminal 4 at Madrid's Barajas-Adolfo Suárez airport (photo: Diego Delso/Wikimedia Commons)
AirHelp, a travel consumer protection organisation, publishes an annual ranking of the world's best and worst terminals, scoring them for facilities, flight punctuality, helpfulness, comfort and a broad range of other features.
Issued every year since 2015 – other than during the pandemic years - the AirHelp Score report puts the international airport in Spain's capital at number 12 worldwide and top in Europe.
Overall, the hub – with four terminals and based in the Madrid satellite town of Barajas – gained 82.5% after a meteoric rise from its 2019 position.
Back then, Madrid airport was at number 33 in the world.
How Madrid and Bilbao score
For flight punctuality, Madrid earned 82.6%; customer opinion rankings gave it 81.9%, and leisure and relaxation facilities such as bars, cafés, restaurants and shops gained 83%.
Connections from Madrid cover the entire world, although direct flights to Latin American destinations are its speciality, making it the gateway to the 'new world' south of the tropics.
It was renamed in 2014 in honour of the first national president of Spain's democratic era, Adolfo Suárez, who died on March 23 that year aged 81 from Alzheimer's.
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