Posts Tagged ‘ ACI ’

That two British airports are making the effort to reach level 4 status demonstrates they still have customer service and satisfaction at the top of their thinking.

Hopefully when the awards are announced next year, things will be a bit more “normal.”

Airports have a lot more thinking to do as they seem to be the pinch point between us wanting to fly and feeling safe to get on the plane.

Airport owners will all be crystal-ball gazing at what the future will bring.

How did European airports fare in the awards? And how did holiday destination airports win?

Four British airports as well as Dublin Airport appeared in the awards lists handed out by Airport Council international, (ACI) the trade association of the world’s airports, last week.

The claims handling company, Air Help, has published an airport global performance survey and neither UK airports nor airlines come out of it very well.

In a busy week, a beaututiful garden re-opens in Spain, a museum in London is open for just tomorrow and yet more news about travel insurance fraud.

Dublin Airport has now become the biggest economic powerhouse in the whole of Ireland.

It all goes to show that there is no standard way of deciding “best” or “worst.” Passengers will remain confused whilst so many organisations provide conflicting results.

Whatever the answer is, passengers seem to feel underwhelmed with European airports.

Newcastle was judged to be the overall winner achieving high levels of passenger satisfaction across all categories, followed closely by Edinburgh, then Liverpool, Cardiff and Glasgow respectively.

European airports don’t come out that well in the latest ASQ awards apart from Heathrow and Dublin. Why not? Airport executives in Europe still have no answer despite years of Asian airport dominance.

Customer satisfaction is important both to the airline and the airline passenger. Measuring that satisfaction is more difficult. Two organisations, Skytrax and ACI (Airports Council International) are probably the companies you might have come across if you have been asked to give your thoughts. Should you believe one or the other, both or neither?

Incheon Airport in South Korea is 10 years old. But for half of that time they have won awards for best service and customer satisfaction. They have won Skytrax awards, (an award voted by airport and airline users) ACI (the airports trade body) customer service awards for the last five years in a row and been featured in many publications as the airport that others aspire to.

In a world where there are surveys about everything and where small numbers of people seem to provide incontrovertible evidence that something is happening, the results of the Airport Service Quality survey (ASQ) which is based on 275,000 surveys worldwide is always interesting. In 2009, 118 airports took part in this survey which involves carrying out a survey 4 times a year at different times of the day and which asks the same questions each time. People are interviewed; they aren’t sent a survey, rung up or e-mailed so it is possible to talk to travellers across all types of flights.
So who won in 2009?