The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has finalised its 2008/09 annual airport service monitoring report, which ranked Brisbane Airport as the best performing in the country, while Sydney came in for major criticism.
The report, which highlights a range of indicators including quality of service, prices, costs, profits and investment levels, ranked Brisbane with the highest level of service quality, achieving an overall level of ‘good’. It was followed by Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne, while Sydney came in last position, a place it has held since the 2005-06 report.
“Airport users, including passengers and airlines, rated Sydney Airport last amongst the monitored airports for the fourth consecutive year and it appears that investment in the international terminal has been slow,” said ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel. “And while Sydney Airport was the only airport to report a fall in passenger numbers, its revenue and profit margins still increased. Sydney Airport also recorded the highest average prices at $13.63 per passenger, compared to the lowest of $7.96 at Melbourne Airport.”
Sydney Airport hit back at Samuel’s comments, labelling the report “out of date” as it does not cover past June 2009, and as such did not take into account a number of milestones reached in its $500 million upgrade of its international terminal. In addition, it said that changes to drop off and parking arrangements at T1 and T2 had improved results in one of its own customer service surveys.
