Baku’s International Airport Chosen As Best In CIS Region

Skytrax has ranked Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku number one in its World Airport Awards category that focuses on the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region. Сaspian News reports in its article Baku’s International Airport Chosen As Best In CIS Region that Heydar Aliyev airport also came in at number 65 worldwide, ahead of New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport (ranked 69) and Los Angeles’s International Airport (ranked 72). In the Best Airports under 5 Million Passengers category, Heydar Aliyev ranked third.

The 2018 World Airport Awards list was announced this week via the official website of Skytrax, which distributes the world’s most prestigious prizes of its kind annually. Skytrax determined the winners for the 2018 awards by examining 550 airports, through 13.73 million airport survey questionnaires that were completed by over 100 different nationalities of airline customers from August 2017 to February 2018.

Criteria included in-depth evaluation of traveler experiences across various airport services and performance indicators including check-in, arrivals, transfers, shopping, security, immigration through to departure at the gate, as well as the cleanness of sanitary facilities and staff appearance.

The Baku-based airport made the list last year, when it was ranked fifth in the CIS region. It had also received the internationally recognized 4-Star Airport rating from Skytrax, which recognizes airports that perform well across production facilities and front-line staff service. Only 37 airports throughout the world have received the 4-star rating.

During the first two months of 2018 the airport served over 365,000 passengers, or 16 percent more than it had during the same period last year, according to data compiled by Azerbaijan Airlines Company.

Today 27 global carriers carry out flights from Heydar Aliyev International Airport to 47 destinations worldwide, including New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Milan, Budapest, Istanbul, Moscow, Dubai, Kiev, Doha, Sharjah, Tbilisi, Baghdad, Tehran and St. Petersburg. The latest city that was added to the airport’s destination map was Abu Dhabi, which is serviced by Etihad Airways.