Phoenix Selected as Top US Airport

November 26, 2019

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) has been selected as the top U.S. airport in the recently released 2019 U.S. airport rankings by The Wall Street Journal.

Phoenix Sky Harbor has branded itself as America’s friendliest airport and has excelled recently, with great Yelp reviews of airport restaurants, fast Wi-Fi and even therapy dogs to help stressed travelers relax.

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PHX edged last year’s winner, Denver International Airport (DEN), which was ranked second. The Wall Street Journal ranked the largest 20 airports in the United States, as well the 20 next-largest airports, which were designated as medium-sized airports. Tampa International Airport (TPA) in Florida was the top-ranked airport in that category. While Tampa didn’t rank first in any of the 15 categories measured, it was consistently strong in most of them.

Rankings were determined by 2,500 subscribers’ responses to a questionnaire. The questions covered five measures of operations, five measures of value and five measures of convenience. Measures included average airfare cost, on-time arrival rate and levels of convenience. The average grade subscribers gave was a C+; the highest grade was only a B and six received grades of C or lower.

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While many of the categories measured can be, and in some cases are being, improved upon by airports, some things, such as weather, are out of their control. One of things that could have enabled Phoenix to overtake Denver this year is the comparatively warm weather that Arizona enjoys.