A recent survey conducted by HappyOrNot ranked Exeter Airport the happiest in the world, with a customer satisfaction rating of 88.66%, over 12% higher than the global average of 76.52%. The Finnish company, formed in 2009, collected 158 million data points from 160 airports in 36 different countries, using its famous ‘Smiley’ feedback system. Terminals were placed in each airport where customers could feedback their experiences by touching four different response buttons, ranging from a dark green smiley face to a red sad face.
on average, 9am was the happiest time to fly and Tuesdays were the happiest days
The ranking is based on data collected between November 2016 and November 2017, with the anonymised responses covering times of travelling and five key points of experience; security, check-in, arrivals, baggage reclaim and washrooms.
The eight happiest airports globally, all ranking above 86%, were:
1 Exeter Airport, U.K. – 88.66%
2= Cork Airport, Republic of Ireland – 88.45%
2= Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport (Rome), Italy – 88.45%
4 Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, U.S.A. – 87.35%
5 Newcastle International Airport, U.K. – 87.05%
6 London Southend Airport, U.K. – 86.79%
7 Cardiff Airport, U.K. – 86.57%
8 Keflavik International Airport, Iceland – 86.35%
The study also found that, on average, 9am was the happiest time to fly, with a rating of 85.7%, and Tuesdays were the happiest days, achieving 83.4% satisfaction.
Exeter Airport’s Managing Director, Matt Roach, commented:
“The HappyOrNot units around the airport have proven to be a very effective and simple way to evaluate our passengers’ experiences. Our staff do their very best to ease the journey for the travellers and this shows in the consistently high positive ratings. I am very proud of the performance reflected in the responses, and the magnificent achievement of being in the top spot in the world.”
“Our staff do their very best to ease the journey for the travellers and this shows in the consistently high positive ratings.”
Ville Levaniemi, HappyOrNot Founder and Executive VP, commented:
“Our analysis presents a unique opportunity to celebrate those places that make the air travel experience pleasurable, based on an enormous amount of data rather than just anecdotal evidence. We want to congratulate Exeter Airport, as well as all the other airports in this list, for ensuring passengers are so often on cloud nine.”
