PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s airport immigration service has been named the best in the world by airline passengers.

The Skytrax World Airport Awards, also known as the Passengers Choice Awards, ranked Kuala Lumpur International Airport’s (KLIA) immigration service as first in the world, beating Hong Kong International Airport (ranked second), and Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) at third place.

The rankings were announced during the award ceremony at the Amsterdam’s Passenger Terminal Expo in the Netherlands on March 14.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2) was ranked third best Low-Cost Airline Terminal, although it was described as Kuala Lumpur’s Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT), while Tokyo Narita Airport’s Terminal 3 was named No 1.

Kuala Lumpur also ranked seventh in having the world’s best airport staff, just below Japan’s Kansai International Airport at No 6 and ahead of Tokyo Narita International Airport at No 8.

Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport was No 1 for best airport staff.

Asian airports dominated the top three overall places, with the big winner being Singapore’s Changi Airport which was named World’s Best Airport for the fifth consecutive year, followed by Japan’s Tokyo International Aiport (Haneda) in second place, and South Korea’s Incheon International Airport in third.

This year’s winners are based on survey questionnaires completed by 13.82 million airline customers of 105 different nationalities, between July 2016 and February 2017.