Skytrax announced Santiago’s Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCL) as the Best Airport Staff in South America for 2026 on March 18, at a ceremony held in London alongside the wider World Airport Awards. The result was drawn from the London-based consultancy’s annual World Airport Survey, which polled travellers of more than 100 nationalities between August 2025 and February 2026 on the friendliness, efficiency, and professionalism of front-line airport employees.
The category is judged separately from Skytrax’s overall “Best Airport” title, which Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport (BOG) retained for an eighth consecutive year. Santiago’s staff award instead reflects passenger sentiment specifically toward check-in, immigration, security, and customer-service teams — a distinction that produced a notably different top 10 to the region’s general airport rankings.
How Skytrax Judges The Best Airport Staff Category
Skytrax’s staff-service award is one of more than a dozen regional and thematic categories issued alongside its flagship World’s Best Airports list. It isolates the human element of the airport experience from infrastructure, retail, and dining scores that feed into other awards.
The methodology weighs several factors drawn from passenger responses:
- Attitude and friendliness of front-line employees
- Efficiency in processing queues at check-in, security, and immigration
- Communication clarity, including handling of multilingual travellers
- Willingness to assist with connections, accessibility needs, and disruptions
- Consistency of service across shops, food outlets, and information desks
Unlike a single satisfaction score, the ranking pools feedback across every customer-facing role at an airport — from ground handlers to retail staff — rather than isolating one department.
The 2026 South America Top 10 In Full
Santiago’s win breaks a run of dominance from Bogotá and Quito, which had traded the top two spots in recent editions. The complete regional ranking for 2026 is below.
| Rank | Airport | City/Country | IATA |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport | Santiago, Chile | SCL |
| 2 | El Dorado International Airport | Bogotá, Colombia | BOG |
| 3 | Mariscal Sucre International Airport | Quito, Ecuador | UIO |
| 4 | Ministro Pistarini International Airport | Buenos Aires, Argentina | EZE |
| 5 | São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport | São Paulo, Brazil | GRU |
| 6 | José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport | Guayaquil, Ecuador | GYE |
| 7 | Jorge Chávez International Airport | Lima, Peru | LIM |
| 8 | Brasília International Airport | Brasília, Brazil | BSB |
| 9 | Rio de Janeiro/Galeão International Airport | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | GIG |
| 10 | Recife/Guararapes International Airport | Recife, Brazil | REC |
Four of the ten places went to Brazilian airports, more than any other country in the region, though none placed inside the top four.
Santiago’s Climb To The Top
SCL’s rise to first place caps several years of steady investment in training and passenger-facing programmes at Chile’s primary international gateway. The airport serves as the main hub for LATAM Airlines and functions as South America’s principal connecting point to trans-Pacific and North American markets.
A few factors distinguish this year’s result from prior editions:
- Santiago placed third for staff service as recently as the 2024 rankings, behind Bogotá and Quito.
- The airport separately picked up Skytrax’s Best Operational Efficiency recognition in 2026, tied to security-queue and passenger-flow improvements.
- SCL’s climb came without unseating Bogotá from the broader “Best Airport in South America” title, underlining how staff perception and overall airport quality are scored independently.
Passengers moving through SCL this year can expect the elevated service standard to extend across Emirates partner check-in counters as well as LATAM’s own long-haul gates, given the airport’s role as a codeshare gateway for several international carriers.
Bogotá And Quito Hold The Chasing Pack
Bogotá’s second-place finish comes even as El Dorado retains the region’s top overall airport crown — a reminder that a single facility can lead on infrastructure and passenger volume while trailing narrowly on staff sentiment. El Dorado remains South America’s busiest hub by passenger numbers, a factor that can make consistent staff scores harder to sustain at scale. (Aviospace does not yet carry a dedicated Bogotá/El Dorado tag page; this links to our closest existing coverage of the airport.)
Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport held third place, continuing a long-standing reputation for approachable service at one of the highest-altitude international airports in the world. Ecuador placed two airports in the top six, with Guayaquil’s José Joaquín de Olmedo airport following in sixth — the strongest showing of any single country outside Brazil.
Brazil’s Four-Airport Showing
No country placed more airports in the South American top 10 than Brazil, though the spread across the table tells its own story:
| Brazilian Airport | Regional Rank |
|---|---|
| São Paulo/Guarulhos (GRU) | 5th |
| Brasília (BSB) | 8th |
| Rio de Janeiro/Galeão (GIG) | 9th |
| Recife/Guararapes (REC) | 10th |
Guarulhos, Latin America’s busiest single airport by some measures, posted the strongest Brazilian result despite handling substantially higher passenger volumes than smaller entrants like Brasília and Recife. That combination — high traffic paired with a mid-table staff score — mirrors a pattern seen at other high-volume hubs globally, where scale tends to work against consistency scores even when absolute service quality is strong.
Why The Staff Award Matters To Travellers
Airport infrastructure investment dominates most aviation headlines, but Skytrax’s own survey data consistently shows that human interactions shape how passengers remember a trip. Strong staff performance tends to correlate with:
- Shorter effective wait times at check-in and security, even without added headcount
- Better handling of missed connections and irregular operations
- More consistent accessibility support for travellers with reduced mobility
- Higher passenger confidence navigating unfamiliar terminals
- Improved word-of-mouth reputation for both the airport and its home carriers
For airlines operating hub-and-spoke networks through SCL, BOG, and GRU, a strong staff reputation can factor into scheduling decisions for connecting itineraries, since smoother ground handling reduces the buffer time airlines build into minimum connection windows.
How South America Compares Globally
South America’s winner sits well outside the World’s Best Airport Staff global top 10 for 2026, which remained dominated by Asian and European hubs.
| Global Rank | Airport | Region |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tokyo Narita | Asia |
| 2 | Chubu Centrair Nagoya | Asia |
| 3 | Singapore Changi | Asia |
| 7 | Munich | Europe |
| — | Arturo Merino Benítez (Santiago) | South America — regional winner only |
None of South America’s top 10 broke into the worldwide staff-service top 10, a gap consistent with prior years and one that Skytrax’s regional breakdowns are partly designed to surface — recognising strong regional performers even where global scale differs sharply between continents.
What Comes Next
Skytrax typically opens its next World Airport Survey cycle in the third quarter of the year, running through the following February before results are announced at the following spring’s ceremony. Airports named in this year’s regional top 10 will look to defend their positions as Latin American passenger volumes continue climbing, with several — including Guarulhos and El Dorado — mid-way through terminal expansion programmes that could reshape staffing needs before the next cycle closes.
For now, Santiago’s SCL becomes the airport to watch heading into 2027, having broken a multi-year pattern that saw Bogotá and Quito alternate at the top of South America’s staff rankings.