A majority of the worst ranked airports in the world are run by Da Vinci Airports
A majority of the worst ranked airports in the world are run by a single company
Interesting thing I discovered making http://AirlineList.com when indexing airports
They're called Da Vinci Airports, but are a French company
Their strategy seems to be a lot like Private Equity:
- buy up airports from struggling governments who need money
- cut costs to the minimum possible while decreasing service quality
- maximize profit by filling up airports over their capacity
Result is airports that:
- lose a lot of luggage
- are very dirty
- are hot cause no functioning AC (is a high cost)
- have overworked staff
- always full of packed crowds (like Lisbon Airport)
- now ranked the worst (Gatwick, Edinburgh, Lisbon)
RyanAir called out Da Vinci recently for being a monopoly, as they own all the big airports in Portugal, and they pushed their fees up so RyanAir decided to remove flights to Madeira
You won't know you're in a Da Vinci airport until you connect to the WiFi which has their name on it
What to do about it?
I think governments should do regular QA on their airports. Even if they're privately owned, airports are the first thing visitors to a country see when they arrive and they judge a country by it
The best airport in the world is Singapore Changi Airport and its owned and ran by the Government of Singapore. Most of the best airports are the same
Maybe airports shouldn't be privately owned by private equity-type firms but should be owned by governments as symbols of their country?
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