New York, October 13, 2026 – FeedbackNow today announced the release of its Q3 2026 Global Airport Index, providing airport leaders with a data-driven benchmark of passenger satisfaction across critical touchpoints, global regions, and airport sizes.
The latest Index reveals a changing passenger experience landscape, with global satisfaction reaching 74.0% in Q3, down from 75.7% in Q2. While nine of the 12 measured journey categories declined, Information Desks, Rental Cars, and Food & Beverage recorded improvements, highlighting the different directions in which airport performance is moving.
Despite the quarterly decline, year-to-date results remain positive. Global satisfaction for January through September 2026 reached 75.1%, compared with 73.5% during the same period in 2025.
Built on real-time passenger feedback collected across more than 100 airports equipped with FeedbackNow solutions, the Index helps airport leaders understand where performance is improving, where new challenges are emerging, and how their operations compare with broader industry benchmarks.
About the Q3 2026 Global Airport Index
The FeedbackNow Global Airport Index consolidates real-time passenger feedback across 12 journey categories, providing a quarterly view of satisfaction throughout the airport experience — from check-in and security to departures, baggage claim, retail, and restrooms.
For airport operations and customer experience leaders, the Index provides insight into three essential questions:
- How is passenger satisfaction changing across the airport journey?
- Which touchpoints are improving, and where are performance gaps widening?
- How does airport performance compare across regions and passenger-volume segments?
By tracking these trends quarterly, FeedbackNow gives airport leaders a clearer understanding of passenger experience performance and opportunities for targeted operational improvement.
Q3 2026 Results and Key Insights
Global airport satisfaction declined 1.7 percentage points to 74.0% in Q3 2026. Beneath the overall score, the quarter revealed meaningful changes across passenger journey touchpoints, with previously strong-performing categories losing ground while select services continued to improve.
Operational bright spots
- Information Desks remained the highest-performing category at 87.6%, increasing from 87.0% in Q2.
- Rental Cars recorded one of the quarter's strongest improvements, rising 1.9 percentage points to 76.0%.
- Food & Beverage remained stable with a slight improvement, reaching 81.6%, compared with 81.5% in Q2.
These results highlight areas of sustained satisfaction and positive momentum despite broader quarterly declines.
Emerging pressure areas
- Baggage Claim experienced the largest quarterly decline, falling 4.8 percentage points to 67.6%, making it the lowest-performing category outside Smoking Areas.
- Departures declined to 70.1%, giving back some of the gains recorded in Q2.
- Security Control fell 4.3 percentage points to 81.8%, although it remained the second-highest-scoring journey category.
- Retail and Restrooms also recorded declines, falling to 74.1% and 77.2%, respectively.
The changes contributed to a widening gap between passenger journey touchpoints. Excluding Smoking Areas, the difference between the highest- and lowest-performing categories reached 20 percentage points, up 1.9 points from Q2.
For airport leaders, these findings highlight the importance of evaluating performance across individual touchpoints rather than relying solely on overall satisfaction scores.
Regional performance
Regional results revealed contrasting trends across the global airport landscape.
- Africa recorded the strongest improvement, rising 5.8 percentage points to 82.4%.
- North America declined 4.6 points to 80.1%.
- Latin America and the Caribbean fell 2.7 points to 77.4%.
- Europe declined 2.3 points to 71.2%.
These differences demonstrate how passenger satisfaction can vary across operating environments and reinforce the value of regional benchmarking.
Airport segment insights
Performance also varied significantly by airport size.
Airports handling more than 40 million passengers annually remained the highest-performing segment at 84.4%, while airports serving 25–40 million passengers recorded the lowest satisfaction at 64.2%.
The 20.2-point difference between these segments remained nearly unchanged from Q2.
Meanwhile, smaller airports serving fewer than 5 million passengers annually recorded improvements, showing that performance trends do not follow a uniform pattern across airport sizes.
Year-to-Date Perspective: Progress Despite Quarterly Shifts
While Q3 recorded a decline in overall satisfaction, the broader year-to-date comparison points to continued progress.
The January–September 2026 Global Airport Index reached 75.1%, compared with 73.5% for the same period in 2025, an improvement of 1.6 percentage points.
Several passenger journey categories recorded year-to-date gains, including Information Desks, Security Control, Departures, Check-in, and Food & Beverage.
However, Arrivals and Retail remained below their comparable 2025 levels, reinforcing the uneven nature of performance improvements across the journey.
The results underscore the value of looking beyond a single quarter to understand longer-term trends, while continuing to monitor areas where satisfaction may be weakening.
How Airports Can Use the Index to Drive Improvement
The Q3 Index reinforces the importance of continuous, touchpoint-level benchmarking as part of airport operational management.
By connecting real-time passenger feedback with regional, airport-size, and journey-specific benchmarks, airport leaders can better understand performance gaps and prioritize opportunities for improvement.
Identify emerging passenger experience challenges
Real-time feedback helps airport teams monitor satisfaction at specific locations and identify changing conditions before they become persistent concerns.
For touchpoints such as Baggage Claim, Departures, and Security Control, ongoing visibility can help teams investigate where passenger experiences may be falling short.
Benchmark performance against comparable airports
Global averages provide useful context, but airport size, location, and operating environments can influence passenger experience.
The Index enables airport leaders to compare results across relevant peer groups and develop more informed performance targets.
Connect passenger feedback with operational response
FeedbackNow's real-time feedback solutions help airport teams capture passenger sentiment at the point of experience and connect emerging issues with operational workflows.
By combining immediate feedback with historical performance trends, teams can identify recurring concerns and focus resources where they may have the greatest impact.
Build greater consistency across the passenger journey
The widening satisfaction gap between airport touchpoints reinforces the need for coordinated experience management.
For airport leaders, the objective is not simply to improve individual scores, but to understand the full passenger journey and strengthen service consistency across departments, locations, and third-party providers.
Download the Full Report
The FeedbackNow Global Airport Index – Q3 2026 provides detailed benchmarks and insights into passenger satisfaction across global airport regions, journey touchpoints, and airport-size segments.
Explore the latest findings to understand where airports are making progress, where new challenges are emerging, and how real-time feedback can support better passenger experiences.
Download the FeedbackNow Global Airport Index – Q3 2026
About the Global Airport Index
The FeedbackNow Global Airport Index is a recurring, real-time benchmark of passenger experience across participating airports worldwide. Based on passenger feedback collected through FeedbackNow solutions, it provides quarterly insights into satisfaction across airport journey touchpoints, regions, and passenger-volume segments.
The Index helps airport operators monitor performance trends, compare results with relevant benchmarks, and identify opportunities for continuous operational improvement.
About FeedbackNow
FeedbackNow provides real-time, on-site feedback and analytics solutions that help organizations understand customer experiences as they happen. By connecting immediate feedback with actionable operational insights, FeedbackNow enables organizations to respond to emerging concerns, improve service delivery, and strengthen customer satisfaction.
Learn more at www.feedbacknow.com.
Contact us to learn more about how FeedbackNow can help improve your customer experience and operations!
