Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA) has been voted the best airport in the region for the second year in a row at the annual Airport Service Quality Awards.

QAIA beat off stiff competition from the likes of Dubai International Airport to triumph in the ‘Best Airport by Region: Middle East’ category at the closely-watched awards, which are based on a survey of some 600,000 passengers collected throughout the year by Airports Council International, an industry body.

The survey asks passengers to rate more than 300 participating airports across 30 key service areas, including check-in, security, and food and beverage facilities.

At a news conference, Kjeld Binger, the CEO of Airport International Group, the company which manages QAIA, said the award was a “truly gratifying global recognition of our efforts based on our passengers from all around the world.”

QAIA welcomed three new airlines in 2015 and handled 7.1 million passengers, a marginal year-on-year increase of 0.1 percent. Cargo traffic, however, rose 7.3 percent to 100,691 tons over the same period. Binger said a pier expansion project to boost the airport’s annual passenger capacity to up to 12 million would be completed in the summer.