London Southend Airport named Britain’s best Airport

A recent survey by a magazine called “Which? Magazine” which made the customers score and rate different airport terminals concluded that the Essex Terminal was by far the best rated one. The assessment was done from over 10 different areas and a total of 11,537 passengers were a part of this survey. The Essex Airport in Britain achieved an overwhelming response from the customers with a score of 84% and in addition to this, it also achieved 5 stars out of the ten categories that were decided for the survey.

Some of the categories that were a part of the survey included the speed of the check-in service, how well was the airport provided with security hence airport security was a top priority, the service at the passport control, adequate information and navigation service and the design of the airport .some of the other categories that were also included were the environment of the airport, the number and quality of food outlets provided to the customers, the number and standard of shops and duty free, the toilets that were available to the customers and passengers should meet a certain mark, and other facilities and amenities.

The airport had been acquired by the Stobart Group in 2008, and since then there have been considerable changes that has boosted up the airport’s ratings. The investment in providing more facilities and amenities include building a new railway station, terminal and also a air traffic control tower so that the passengers are more at ease. Just last year Easy Jet has also started operating on the airport while the Aer Lingus has also been operating flights from London Southend Airport to Dublin.

Some of the other airports that also did well include Humberside which is a close second best as it scored a rating of eighty one percent while following close behind is the Robin Hood – Doncaster Sheffield which achieved a score of seventy eight percent. However,the Luton Airport scored the lowest with a percentage of forty three rated by the customers. The executive director of the “Which? Magazine” , Richard Lloyd has reported to have said “Our research shows a jumbo jet-sized gap in the performance of UK airports with smaller terminals generally performing better,” hence it was concluded that most of the small terminals have a lot of work to be done in order to meet the standards expected from the passengers and customers.

This is said to be necessary in order to keep the passengers satisfied. The BBC has reported to have said that the Luton Airport has been worked on since the past year and the facilities provided have greatly improved which had not been reflected in the survey. It was also concluded that the online check-in service which was assumed to reduce the number of queues and reduce the time spent at the airport was not correct. This is because there was hardly any difference in time wasted by the customers who took advantage of the online check in service and those that used bag drop desks.