Soon, fliers can 'voice' their complaints at airport

Mumbai: In a few months from now, passengers at the Mumbai airport can literally voice their complaints about that longer than usual queue at
the immigration or check-in counter, rude staff or that too expensive a sandwich. Video-recording some of the passenger responses about their "airport experience'' is one of the initiatives that Mumbai airport will launch soon as part of a quality service management process, which kicked off last week.
To put it simply, it is about giving passengers a better airport experience. In turn, this would get the Mumbai airport a slot among the better airports of the world.
At present, Incheon airport in Seoul hogs the top spot in the survey carried out by Airports Council International (ACI), a non-profit organisation with 597 members who operate 1,649 airports worldwide. ACI's Airport Service Quality Program conducts regular, extensive passenger surveys on airports to rate the best and the worst of the lot on 16 key performance indicators like waiting time at check-in, number of baggage carts, service by staff etc.
Incheon airport has, for some time now, managed to keep high scores (scores from 1 to 5) of 4.7 and 4.8 for most of these indicators. The Mumbai airport, which has been taking a bashing in the ACI passenger surveys, has over the last few years improved its ratings, especially in categories like retail facility, cleanliness, etc. But when it comes to indicators like staff courtesy, the airport falls to a poor 3.7, said the official. At the end of the last quarter, Mumbai scored an average of 3.76.
A steering committee headed by Rajiv Jain, president, MIAL and comprising representatives from all these agencies has been created to spearhead efforts to improve service quality at Mumbai airport. A task force will work under the committee to implement the projects. The committee held its first meeting last week and decided to start work on three areas.
First, it will create awareness among all employees at the Mumbai airport. The target is 20,000 employees and awareness would be spread through posters and intranet. The second and the most important area from the passenger's perspective will be to identify training requirement for any agency at the airport.
"It was decided that we should videotape passenger responses, `' the official said, adding that the exercise would begin in a few months.
29/06/09 Manju V/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jun 2009, New Jun 2009