Punta Cana International Airport (PUJ) has been handed the APEX Partner Award by Airports Council International World, a nod to its role in the Airport Excellence Program — an industry scheme where airport teams review each other's operations and swap ideas on safety and performance, all benchmarked against ICAO standards. The prize was collected by Alberto Smith, the airport's Landside Director, at the ACI-LAC/World Annual General Assembly in Lima, Peru, held as the APEX program celebrated its 15th year.
For anyone who has flown into Punta Cana, none of this will come as a shock. Opened in 1983, PUJ is the busiest airport in both the Dominican Republic and the wider Caribbean, moving roughly eight million passengers a year and connecting to 81 international airports across 26 countries. If you're flying to the island's east-coast resort strip — Punta Cana, Bávaro, Cap Cana and beyond — odds are you'll land here.
The airport is also decently equipped for the volume it handles: two runways, 41 boarding gates, 45 aircraft parking positions and four VIP lounges. That matters in practice, because the Caribbean's high season pushes a lot of wide-body charters and scheduled flights through the terminal at once, and gate and lounge capacity is what keeps those busy arrival waves manageable.
This isn't PUJ's first shelf of trophies. It was named ACI's "Best Airport by Size and Region" in the 5–15 million passenger category for the Caribbean and Latin America eight years running, from 2015 to 2023. It also holds ACI's Level 3 Customer Experience Accreditation, a four-star SKYTRAX rating, Level 3 Carbon Footprint certification and separate ACI recognition for hygiene standards.
Why should a holidaymaker care about an industry award? Because it's a reasonable proxy for what your arrival and departure will actually be like. Airports that score well on safety audits, customer experience accreditation and sustainability tend to be the ones where passport control flows, the air conditioning works, and the transfer buses run on time. Flying into a well-run hub is a quietly better start to a beach week — especially useful to know if you're choosing between Punta Cana and resort areas served by smaller, more basic fields.
Practically speaking, PUJ's scale means good flight options: nonstops from North America and much of Europe, plus regional connections across the Caribbean and Latin America. If you're booking a Dominican Republic trip, it's worth comparing fares into PUJ against Santo Domingo's Las Américas — PUJ is closer to the main resort zones, so the extra 45 minutes or more of transfer time from the capital often isn't worth a small saving.
The APEX award itself is a behind-the-scenes honour, but the picture it confirms is a useful one: the Dominican Republic's main gateway is one of the Caribbean's most professionally run airports, and that's exactly what you want under you when you touch down for a holiday.
Original report: Dominican Today.
