At Euronews Travel, we spend a lot of time in airports, and we have ~opinions~ about plenty of them.
And while we’d love to share our thoughts on the best and worst in Europe, we think it’s best we stick to the cold, hard facts when it comes to the pages of this website.
Luckily for us, flight compensation company AirHelp has crunched the data to come up with a new ranking of airports around the world.
The ranking looks at factors including on-time performance, which means flight arrivals within 15 minutes of their scheduled slot, plus passenger experience and facilities, which are based on nearly 14,300 unique airport ratings from travellers across 68 countries.
As part of the survey, passengers are asked to evaluate airports on things like staff, wait times, accessibility, cleanliness, signage and information, plus the restaurant and retail offerings. Each element is scored on a scale from “very bad” to “very good”.
For 2026, 279 airports from 76 countries were analysed and given an AirHelp Score, which is weighted 60% on on-time performance, and 20% on passenger experience and facilities and comfort each.
The best airports in Europe
This year, the best airport in Europe is Bodø Airport in Norway, which came out ninth overall.
The airport, which is just north of the Arctic Circle, has an on-time score of 8.7, meaning that 87% of flights that arrived between 1 May 2025 and 30 April 2026 were punctual. Bodø also received a score of 7.6 for passenger experience, and 7.0 for facilities and comfort.
Billund Airport in Denmark also narrowly made it into the top 10, thanks to its on-time score of 8.1. The airport fared better in terms of passenger experience, having been handed an 8.7, and facilities and comfort, where it received a mark of 7.7.
The next European airport in the rankings, Bilbao Airport in Spain, is 21st overall, with an on-time score of 8.4, an experience score of 8.0, and a facilities score of 7.0.
Bergen Flesland Airport quickly followed in 23rd, with Istanbul Havalimani Airport rounding out the top five in Europe in 29th place.
The worst airports in Europe
Bad news for Lisbonites, as Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport was ranked 274th overall.
The airport has an on-time score of just 6.3, with a 7.3 and 6.8 in the other two categories, respectively.
Rhodes Diagoras Airport, in 271st place, also fared poorly due to its on-time score of 6.5.
Manchester Airport was ranked 269th, Crete Heraklion Airport was 268th, and Nice Côte d’Azur Airport was 267th.
Yikes.
