DENVER -- A travel writer who runs a website that focuses on the intricacies of air travel released a ranking of the world's best and worst airports. Denver's didn't fare well on the list.
According to ThePointsGuy.com's Michael Park, the ranking utilized statistics including timeliness, accessibility and amenities.
While cities like Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Honolulu rounded out the top five, Denver International Airport cracked the bottom 10, coming in as eighth worst on the list.
According to the writer, DIA has the second longest drive time -- although three airports tie in that category. Passengers also had to deal with a one-in-five chance that a flight would be canceled. Travelers at DIA also reportedly have the fifth-longest wait time in security lines (at more than 16 minutes).
"What we wanted to do was get a really data-driven analysis of which airports are delivering on the things that matter most," said James Cury, editorial director of ThePointsGuy.Com. "We’re not looking at things that are subjective like design, and maybe some people might wish that we had, in that an airport could have performed very well and may not be the prettiest airport. But that was not something we could quantify so we didn’t include that."
Some frequent flyers agreed with the low ranking, especially while they were waiting in the security line at DIA.
"Most of the airports aren’t as congested as this is here in one area, so it makes it a lot more difficult to get through here in a timely manner," said Rodney Webb, a frequent flyer familiar with airports all over the country. "I go to Dallas, and I can be through the line in five minutes. Not here."
According to officials at DIA, the airport's ranking on the blog's list isn't representative of the experience many have.
Those officials pointed to the Skytrax awards -- a gold standard among the air travel industry -- and an award given to the airport in 2016.
Skytrax ranked Denver as the top U.S. airport among those with more than 50 million passengers per year. The only airports that came close were Seattle-Tacoma in the 40 to 50 million passenger-per-year range and the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in the 30 to 40 million passengers-per-year range.
In that same ranking report, Skytrax called DIA the second best domestic airport, the second best airport in North America, the third best regional airport in the world, the best regional airport in North America and the third best airport in terms of staff in North America.
DIA is the 15th busiest airport in the world and the fifth busiest in the U.S. with more than 53 million passengers recorded each year.
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