ACI EUROPE Best Airport Award winners for 2022 revealed

The Best Airport Awards1 recognise excellence and outstanding achievement across the entire portfolio of airport activities. This year has been characterised by both the many ways in which airports are recovering after COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing focus on sustainability-related achievements. Airports in this section are divided into five groups, according to 2019 passenger traffic.

To recognise airports’ efforts in key areas, the Awards portfolio also includes the Eco-Innovation Award, the Human Resources Excellence Award and the Digital Transformation Award.

This year’s judging panel comprised representatives from the European Commission, EUROCONTROL, SESAR Joint Undertaking, the International Transport Forum and ECAC. Eco-Innovation Award submissions were held to scrutiny by the Advisory Board of Airport Carbon Accreditation.

ECO-INNOVATION AWARD

The Eco-Innovation Award recognises airports’ outstanding environmental initiatives and is presented in association with Airport Carbon Accreditation.

This year’s Eco-Innovation Award went jointly to Bristol Airport and iGA Istanbul Grand Airport, which both submitted their projects in the category of Climate Change.

Bristol Airport’s project was the Low Emission Turnaround trial with easyJet as part of its Strategic Sustainability Partnership. The objective of Bristol "to show carbon savings can be achieved without compromising operational efficiency" was a notable starting point, given the challenge of reducing scope 3 emissions.

iGA Istanbul Grand Airport on the other hand submitted a project of IoT technology as a tool in managing and optimising processes and decision-making. Environmental co-benefits included the real-time data referring to airport-wide sustainability.

On winning ACI’s Eco-Innovation Award, Simon Earles, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Director, Bristol Airport sad:

“We are delighted to be recognised by ACI and winning the Eco-Innovation award.  This award supports our long-term sustainability strategy and is another example of demonstrating our commitment to addressing climate change.

“This award is such an incredible achievement and is recognition to the teams and partners collaborating and making a significance change to aircraft ground operations.  The teams at easyJet, Bristol Airport and our partners including DHL, TCR, ITW, Up and Away, worked tirelessly to get this initiative from inception to reality and reduced aircraft turnaround emissions.  I am extremely proud of our efforts, and we are receiving this award on behalf of all teams involved. It’s another step on our way to becoming one of the UK’s most sustainable airports. Sustainability is at the heart of Bristol Airport and everyone’s collective involvement and is testament to our teams commitment and recognition in managing, reducing and offsetting carbon dioxide emissions under our control.”