Dubai Airports held its first Airline Excellence Awards yesterday to recognise airline excellence in customer service, on-time performance and partnership at both Dubai International (DXB) and Dubai World Central (DWC), centered around achievements throughout 2016.

 The ceremony, which was held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dubai Festival City, was attended by Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths and CEO of the Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing Issam Kazim.

 Airlines were nominated in five categories which contributed to Dubai Airports objectives to achieve high levels of on-time performance, partnership, engagement and customer service. Additionally, an award was given to “Airline Employee of the Year”.

 Qatar Airways won a total of three awards for engagement, on-time performance (over 2,000 flights per year category) and on-time performance (DWC). Air France also won an on-time performance award (in the 200 to 1,999 flights per year category). The customer service award went to Emirates Airline while Air France-KLM won the award for partnership. The airline employee of the year award was won by Yonas Gebre of Ethiopian Airlines.

 “Tonight, we celebrate the fact that together we connect the world with 100 airlines serving 240 destinations around the globe with 1,100 flights per day,” said Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths in his opening remarks. “We do so with safety as our top priority. We do it with our customers at the very heart of everything we do. We do so recognising that your success is our success.”