SkyTrax publishes rankings based on passenger surveys about airlines and airports. Now, SkyTrax has released a list of top 100 airports and this was covered on a recent Economist article that you can access here.
As Gulliver points out, there are no US airports in the top 25 and I would say rightfully so.
The best airport according to this SkyTrax survey is Singapore’s Changi airport that is certainly nice. I really like its close proximity to the city center that is Singapore’s main differentiator to the number 2 airport on this list that is Seoul’s Incheon.
Incheon is so far out from the city that it takes about an hour in a bus each way without traffic or about 45 minutes by subway.
Conclusion
I am not a huge believer of these SkyTrax ratings that some airlines i.e. Qatar uses to tout their Five Start-service at every possible occasion (just watch their emails and announcements).
These airport rankings might be ok from a transit passenger point of view that never leaves the airport, but that the Beijing airport could be on the 5th place is beyond of my understanding.