Rome Airport Earns the First COVID-19 5-Star Airport Rating

At one point earlier this year, Italy was the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic as the entire country came to a halt. Forget travel; even its own citizens were on lockdown.

Now Italy is ready to show the world its startling turnaround, starting with visitors’ arrival.

Rome's Fiumicino Airport – also known as Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport – has become the first airport in the world to earn "the COVID-19 5-Star Airport Rating" from Skytrax, an international airport industry ratings body, according to CNN.

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In a release from Skytrax, the organization said it based its rating on "a combination of procedural efficiency checks, visual observation analysis and ATP sampling tests."

On September 1, the airport opened a 7,000-square-foot COVID-19 testing center, which is co-managed with the Italian Red Cross. Skytrax said the airport scored points for having easy-to-read signage in multiple languages, strict enforcement of mask-wearing, visibly present cleaning staff and efficiency thanks to the consolidation of all incoming and outgoing flights to a single terminal for easier tracking.

Skytrax has only ranked European airports so far, handing out three stars to Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP) in Spain, Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE) in France and London's Heathrow (LHR).

According to the Skytrax rating system, five stars indicates "very high standards of airport cleanliness and maintenance procedures," while four stars is "good" and three "average." Two stars, the lowest possible rating, means that the airport's anti-Covid protocols "need work."