World's best airport for 10 years
.jpg?w=728)
The terminal of Incheon International Airport / Courtesy of Incheon International Airport Corp.
By Kim Rahn
Incheon International Airport opened in March 2001.
It has 60 cities each with a population of more than 1 million within a 3.5-hour flight time.
The airport expanded facilities in 2008 to meet growing demand, building a third runway and a concourse and adopting automatic check-in and immigration systems. Its annual passenger capacity increased from 30 million people to 44 million, while its cargo capacity grew from 2.7 million tons to 4.5 million, and the number of flight operations, from 240,000 to 410,000.
It is now building a second terminal for scheduled completion in 2017 to handle an additional 18 million passengers, as well as baggage handling system with 42 kilometers of conveyer belts, and transportation infrastructure including railways, rail stations, bus stops and parking lots.
Last year, 45.5 million people used the airport, up 9.7 percent from the previous year. Some 2.5 million tons of cargo was delivered through it, up 3.8 percent. The accumulated number of users since the opening exceeded 400 million and the accumulated volume of cargo, 30 million tons.
The annual sales of duty free shops there surpassed 2 trillion won in 2014, for the first time in the world.
As of January, 88 carriers are operating to 182 cities in 54 countries.
Last month, Incheon again topped the Airport Service Quality ranking by the Airports Council International, becoming the first airport in the world to win the award for 10 straight years.
It was also named top performer in the Asia-Pacific region among large-sized airports dealing with more than 40 million passengers annually. In this category, Incheon took the top ranking the first year it was categorized as a large-sized airport after its number of passengers surpassed 40 million in 2013.
The airport also topped the best duty free shop ranking of Business Traveller’s U.S. edition for five consecutive years.
In 2014, another world-renowned magazine, Global Traveler, picked the airport as the Best Overall Airport in the World. Incheon has taken the title for 10 times since 2004 except for 2005. It was the first airport to do so and was inducted into the magazine’s Hall of Fame.
Skytrax, a U.K.-based air transport research firm, named Incheon as the world’s best transfer airport.
Incheon aims to develop an “airport city” by setting up shopping, leisure, tour, entertainment and convention facilities as well as logistics on the land around it.
Four hotels, four office buildings, a golf course and the BMW Driving Center were set up, while Paradise Sega Sammy is building an integrated resort named Paradise City for a scheduled opening in 2017.