HIGH RATINGS FOR NI AIRPORTS IN NEW CAA ACCESSIBILITY REPORT

TWO of Northern Ireland’s three airports received the highest ranking in the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s annual Airport Accessibility Report, which ranks the performance of UK airports on the assistance services they provide to disabled and less mobile passengers.

With more people travelling through our airports, and more of these people requesting assistance services than ever before, the latest report from the regulator shows that the majority of airports rated positively, but three airports need improvement.
In 2024, 5.5 million passengers requested assistance at UK airports, approximately 1.9 percent of total passengers. This has increased from 0.94 percent in 2010, 1.35 percent in 2019 and 1.69 percent in 2023 when 4.6 million passengers requested assistance.
Selina Chadha, Group Director for Consumers and Markets at the UK Civil Aviation Authority said:
“We want disabled passengers and those with limited mobility to be confident when travelling through UK airports. Our mission is to protect people and enable aerospace and we believe that entire industry should be behind the goal of making aviation accessible to all.
“It is welcome that most airports scored positively, but there is clearly more to do from those found to be needing improvement. With demand for the services rising dramatically in recent years, all airports have a huge challenge ahead to ensure they continue to offer the assistance services their passengers deserve.”
This report assesses the 28 UK airports with more than 150,000 passengers in the calendar year 2024 against a standard framework and covers performance over the year April 2024 to March 2025.
This year’s ratings show that 11 airports achieved a ‘very good’ rating:
• Belfast City, East Midlands, Newcastle and Teeside: retained their ‘very good’ rating.
• Aberdeen, Belfast International, Bournemouth, Exeter, and London Luton: all improved on last year’s ‘Good’ rating.
• Cardiff and London Gatwick both improved significantly after being ranked as ‘needs improvement’ last year.
The majority of airports, 14 in total, received a ‘good’ ranking:
• Bristol, Liverpool and Norwich showed major improvement after being rated as ‘needs improvement’ last year.
• Birmingham, Inverness, London City and Manchester all retained a ‘good’ rating this year.
• City of Derry, Cornwall Newquay, Glasgow, Leeds Bradford, London Stansted, London Southend and Southampton were also rated as ‘good’ in this year’s assessment.