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Rabat- Airports Council International (ACI), an entity that self-describes as “The voice of the world’s airports”, and in charge of monitoring and evaluating airports’ performances in satisfying customers at the global level, has recently unveiled its list of the world best airports.
And Casablanca’s Mohamed V International has made it to the global top, thus jumping to the coveted place of number one in Africa, and also establishing or securing a reputation of a customer-friendly atmosphere, especially regarding comfort, security, and traffic.
In the global ranking published on its website, ACI, which also gives prominence to restaurants and lounges in its overall assessment, said: “ASQ is the only worldwide program to survey passengers at the airport on their day of travel. The program measures passengers’ views of 34 key performance indicators. 74% of the world’s top 100 busiest airports are part of the ASQ network which delivers 600,000 individual surveys per year in 42 languages in 84 countries. The program served 343 airports in 2017,” adding that Casablanca is “Africa’s grand winner”, followed by Mauritius and Durban airports.
ACI further noted that this year’s list of countries that made the cut was characterized by an “unprecedented”, “challenging”, and “increasingly competitive airport industry operating environment, where continuous service improvement is a key ingredient in business performance”, which would then suggest that Casablanca’s Mohamed V International, fulfilling the above criteria, reflects the considerable efforts that Moroccan airports-linked authorities have been deploying to drastically improve the country’s aviation business, especially as the Kingdom is very keen on further keeping or capitalizing on its long-standing and undisputed stature of “touristic hub.”
But while the Kingdom’s can pride itself on its airports, the country’s national airlines (Royal Air Maroc) did not unfortunately make it to aviation companies’ ‘La cour des grands.’ In that category, considering some other criteria, essentially travel cost (low cost with good quality), the best African airlines are said to be, respectively, Ethiopian Airlines, Kenya Airways, South African Airways, Egypt Air, and Fast Jet (Tanzania), among others.
The improving image of Africa-based airlines has prompted many observes to argue that the African Union’s recent Single African Market Initiative, a project aiming to submit African air travel practititioners to the “same regulatory framework”, is perhaps the principal but ‘invisible’ incubator of this emerging image of trustworthy and reliable “African” aviation companies.
While that observation has considerable legitimacy, recent indications that Africa’s airports traffics will almost triple in the next two decades, reaching the impressive figure of 303 million passengers per year, is another indicator that the continents authorities still have a lot on their plates, if, anyways, they are in the mindset ok maintaining this nascent favorable view of the continent’s business sector.
