Why do Asia-Pacific airports excel in ACI’s annual Airport Service Quality (ASQ) customer satisfaction survey? Mark Adamson investigates.

What makes Asia-Pacific airports so special? How do they manage to maintain their levels of service? Is it cultural and political differences that are difficult for other countries to imitate or are there basic tenets, management techniques and expertise, which can be learnt from and improved upon?

In short, can European or American airports hope to match the levels of passenger satisfaction and customer service achieved in Asia?

After analysing the ASQ data for 140 airports around the world, it is clear is that there is no one factor or simple solution to providing outstanding levels of service.

Top performing airports understand where to prioritise and make sure that they keep on top of the key aspects of the airport. They regularly renovate and innovate; and if there are unavoidable weaknesses in the overall service offering, focus on their strengths to differentiate themselves.

This is particularly true of small airports, which can capitalise on their size to provide a friendly, swift, hassle free experience, which is truly appreciated by anyone who travels regularly through large hubs.

Employing the right staff is an obvious essential for great customer service. Indeed, many organisations recognise that the quality of their staff is their greatest strength.

Cultures that are highly attuned to the concept and provision of service will therefore always have an advantage. This is one of the factors in Asian airports being top of the satisfaction rankings.

However, passenger contact with airport staff usually means that the passenger has a problem. A perfect airport experience is one where the passenger has no need for the airport staff.

A fundamental and sometimes uncomfortable truth is that the origins of a great airport experience are often in the airport’s architecture, its ambience and the practicality of its design and building materials.

Piecemeal approaches to airport development and renovation often result in the lack of a coherent overall strategy for presenting passengers with a consistently clean, pleasant and spacious facility.

It is often forgotten that getting from the terminal entrance into the airplane swiftly and with the minimum of hassle is a passenger’s fundamental requirement of an airport. If the facilities are also operating above their intended capacity, it is no wonder that the quality of the passenger experience declines.

Regular investment is a key part of a strategy of continued excellence, but airports do not all have the same level of funding or backing (or perhaps motivation?) from their owners and governments.

For several Asian cities, the airport has long been their primary or only connection with the outside world. Recognising the importance of providing extensive connections and a world-class facility to attract tourists and business, some governments have made it a priority to ensure their airports are among the best in the world.

For cities which are less visibly reliant on the airport for their economies, investment is often slowed or delayed due to competing infrastructure projects, environmental concerns, space issues (including costs) and a desire for maximising profitability and non-aeronautical income.

The sheer cost of airport facilities means that making do with or simply extending or renovating an old facility conceived in the middle of the last century often seems to make better financial sense than starting afresh.

For this reason, many airports receive average passenger satisfaction scores. The world-class, brand new terminal is counter-balanced by the older ones.

ASQ results show that outstanding airport services are based on a consistent overall passenger experience. This means efficient passenger flows and consistent quality of facilities throughout the airport.

However, new facilities alone do not explain the Asian excellence or we would see similar passenger satisfaction scores at new airports around the world.

The facilities may be the foundation of the airport experience, but the airport management defines, creates and maintains the ambience. The airport staff (including staff in shops, restaurants, customs and security, since most passengers assume they all work for the airport) are responsible for delivering this vision of service.

A key point to remember is that service is not just the responsibility of customer facing staff; some of the most important aspects linked to customer service are not customer facing. Cleaners, baggage handlers and baggage cart handlers for example. Small details such as assigning gates close to the terminal wherever possible are a simple matter of having a service mindset. This means shorter walks for passengers and can make huge differences to passenger perceptions. Everyone needs to focus on the passenger for truly outstanding service.

So how do Asian airports do it? The ASQ programme shows that there are a number of key similarities in how the top airports are managed. In short, the top airports prioritise and focus on the key factors that drive passenger satisfaction at their airport.

Analysis of the ASQ data shows that these are also the key factors that drive passenger satisfaction for all airports regardless of size and location. Put another way, there are some universal truths to the airport experience.

The difference between top airports and the rest is that for various reasons – old facilities, operating over capacity, poor terminal design, poor overall strategy, heavy focus on non-aeronautical revenue generation or simply poor management and employees’ lack of pride in the airport – lower ranked airports have implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) prioritised other factors.

The airports with the very highest passenger satisfaction scores pursue excellence in the key areas with a single-minded zeal. They ensure that efforts and initiatives are always focused on aspects of service, which will impact the customer and will drive passenger satisfaction higher. ASQ analysis splits the different aspects of customer service into two broad groups: ‘satisfiers’ and ‘dissatisfiers’. The satisfiers drive satisfaction, the dissatisfiers drive dissatisfaction.

Continued investment in satisfiers can continually improve overall satisfaction but, crucially, after a certain level, continued investment in dissatisfiers has no impact. Consider this example – ten dollars for a cup of coffee causes outrage, one dollar for a cup of coffee causes indifference, twenty cents for a cup of coffee also leads to indifference. Therefore why bother offering a twenty-cent coffee? Knowing which services to limit and when to limit them can make big differences to available resources.

Finally, the top airports leave little to chance. Most have devoted considerable resources to motivating their staff and accurately measuring and monitoring performance and, importantly, making these statistics and improvement of them part of the day-day business language at all levels of the organisation.

By creating an organisational culture driven by quantitative measurement and systematic improvement, high quality service is easier to identify, monitor and promote.

Clearly, staff motivation is a vital aspect in this approach, but cultures which for various reasons prefer not to use such structured, quantitative approaches (Relying instead on ad hoc systems such as comment cards or individual experiences to identify passenger perceptions), are condemned sooner or later to confusion.

Passengers who voluntarily fill in comment cards are invariably those who have been sufficiently polarised by a single experience, usually negative and usually one single aspect of the airport. Therefore, the airport is reacting to a vocal minority, which is often not truly representative of the majority of the airport’s passengers – and is all too often complaining about peripheral issues.

Top performing airports aim to improve the perception of the majority; they focus on the factors that influence passenger satisfaction and they create systems within their organisations that allow them to improve measurably year after year.

ASIA-PACIFIC AIRPORTS/JANUARY-MARCH 2009

The opening up of the market ensures that cargo handling competition at Asia-Pacific airports has never been so fierce, writes Ian Putzger.

The opening up of the Asian ground handling market is creating some exciting new opportunities for operators that specialise in the handling of cargo shipments. The situation has led to renewed interest in the region from some of the world’s biggest cargo handling companies, which appear to be queuing up for a piece of the action.

And their interest is expected to intensify in the years ahead as record levels of cargo are predicted to pass through the region’s gateways.

One of the airports to buck with the tradition and allow a ‘foreign’ operator to enter the market is India’s Hyderabad International Airport, which has set up a joint-venture company with Menzies Aviation to run the cargo warehouse at the newly opened gateway.

As part of the deal, Menzies has been awarded a 15-year concession to operate and manage the facility until it reaches its 100,000-tonne capacity, which in reality is expected to happen in the next six or seven years.

The gateway’s operator, GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (GHIAL), holds a 51% stake in the venture company.

Elsewhere, a host of international handling companies have Asian airports in their sights. Singapore Airport Terminal Services, for example, has signed a joint venture agreement with Air India to provide ground handling services at Bangalore’s soon to be opened Bengaluru International Airport.

And in China – Asia’s other chief growth engine besides India – Lufthansa Cargo has set up a joint venture ground handling company to operate the Tianjin Airport Hua Yu Air Cargo Terminal at the up and coming gateway of Tianjin Binhai International Airport.

Korean Air Cargo and its Chinese partner, Sinotrans, intend to base a joint venture cargo airline at Tianjin.

Lufthansa Cargo owns 46% of the handling company, which is slated to run a new freight terminal with an annual capacity of 360,000 tonnes.

The Tianjin project is indeed its third foray into freight handling in China, for the German carrier holds a 50% stake in the International Cargo Centre Shenzhen Ltd (PACTL) – where Lufthansa Cargo’s Chinese subsidiary Jade Cargo Airlines is based – and has a 29% interest in the Shanghai Pudong International Airport Cargo Terminal.

Nils Haupt, head of corporate relations of Lufthansa Cargo, claims that the Shanghai initiative has proved “very successful for the joint venture partners” to date.

In fact the facility broke the one million tonnes of cargo per annum barrier for the first time in 2007 and now accommodates close to 50% of freight handled at Shanghai Pudong. Cargo throughput at the gateway hit a record high of 2.5 million tonnes last year.

And it appears to be a similar success story in Shenzhen where Lufthansa Cargo claims that PACTL – which was founded in 1999 – has grown into the second-largest independent cargo terminal operator in China.

Multi-national handling conglomerates Swissport and Worldwide Flight Services have also been pushing into the Asian freight handling theatre.

Swissport opened a 17,600sqm cargo complex at Singapore Changi in 2006, the year after it acquired local passenger and cargo handling agent, Globe Ground Korea, to become the third force at Incheon International Airport.

Its Changi terminal is equipped with a fully automated ULD handling system and other advanced features. With an initial capacity of 250,000 tonnes and expansion potential to 400,000, it was the largest station in the handling company’s global footprint when it came on stream.

Worldwide Flight Services opened a cargo terminal at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi in 2006, a move that company president Olivier Bijaoui described as the start of a growing presence in Asia.

“The Asian area is growing fast and above the average, what makes an engagement interesting,” comments Swissport spokesman, Stephan Beerli.

To his frustration, however, Beerli claims that the opportunities for international handlers in the region remain limited. “There is still a long way to go as real liberalisation and deregulation of the market cannot take place everywhere until many existing reciprocity agreements come to an end,” he comments. “We are, however, moving in the right direction.”



His feelings are echoed by some airlines, former Northwest Airlines Cargo president, Jim Friedel, most notably declaring that handling duopolies at many Asian gateways stood in the way of airlines’ efforts to improve service levels due to lack of competition.

Notwithstanding its links with subsidiary Singapore Airport Terminal Services (SATS) – the largest ground handling provider at Singapore Changi – Singapore Airlines Cargo also favours more competition.

“More handlers means more choice,” says Goh Choon Phong, president of Singapore Airlines Cargo. “This will be good for us and all other carriers, since the ground handlers will compete to drive down cost and improve service levels for the airlines.”

Swissport and Worldwide Flight Services were among the first handling companies to embrace Cargo 2000, a quality initiative launched by airlines and freight forwarders to establish benchmarks for processing and monitoring air cargo along the supply chain.

“With the Cargo 2000 initiative, handling agents have become more aware of the importance of timely updates of shipment status information to satisfy customer requirements,” Goh observes.

Many of the large international handlers are also involved in IATA’s e-freight drive, which aims to banish paper from the air cargo processes, an objective that could save the industry $1.2 billion in costs a year, according to IATA estimates.

Incumbent operators at large Asian gateways, however, reject the argument that they are less likely to invest in service upgrades without more competitors breathing down their neck.

Warren Bishop, director of corporate development at Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals, can certainly point to a number of recent investments to speed up processes and extend the company’s reach to other airports in the Pearl River Delta.

Bishop, for one, believes that enhancing productivity maximises throughput at Hong Kong International Airport, ultimately reduces costs for the airlines and improves service levels.

Times are indeed a-changing, although few are likely to go as far as the partnership agreement that Swissport signed in November 2005 with Russian freighter airline AirBridge Cargo and Siberia-based KrasAir, to jointly develop and operate a cargo hub in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

Still, the rules of engagement have evolved for many carries over the years, as the emergence of multi-national handling outfits has allowed the pursuit of multi-station agreements.

Indeed Beerli says that Swissport’s international expansion across the region is in part driven by requests from its customers to enter new markets to provide more competition.

United Airlines claims that costs savings and greater flexibility have proved to be the key gains of its 2003 decision to hand over the cargo facilities at its biggest US stations to two large handling outfits.

“It’s a more process-driven environment,” notes Scott Dolan, president of cargo and senior vice president of airport operations. “The Swissports of this world don’t have the constraints that we have on the service side.”

Is this trend likely to be repeated in Asia-Pacific? It is hard to say as most airlines appear reluctant to embrace multi-station or broad regional agreements, mindful of local variations in performance and service levels.

“Our selection of ground handling at online stations depends on the strength and quality of service that the general handling agent is able to provide at that particular location,” says Ram Menen, senior vice president of cargo at Emirates Airlines.

“From our experience, although within one group or company all branches should have consistency of service, the reality is that it is not the case. Service levels vary quite a bit.”

Which does not mean that the Dubai-based carrier has no regional handling deals. Servisair is the sole handling provider for Emirates SkyCargo throughout the UK, which Menen attributes to the company’s service levels at each individual station there.

“When we look at an offline station or online via road feeder service, we tend to look at a handler who can provide us service in several countries or stations and who is able to bill us centrally for service rendered,” he adds.

Compared with Europe and the US, the Asia-Pacific region has a lot of catching up to do in terms of the opening up of the ground handling market, but if the growing number of joint ventures are anything to go by, it is going in the right direction.

Aisa-Pacific Airports 2008 Issue 1

Asia-Pacific Airports is the quarterly publication of ACI Asia-Pacific, which represents the airports in the world’s fastest-growing and most dynamic of all the Airports Council International (ACI) regions.

This publication is the key communication tool for ACI Asia-Pacific’s 95 members in 45 countries and territories. These include operators running some of the newest and fastest-growing airports in the world, such as Beijing Capital International and Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Asia-Pacific Airports’ editorial covers airport news, views, features and interviews from across the region and is the ideal advertising vehicle for suppliers of products and services, as well as for airports from the region to promote and market themselves.

The magazine is distributed to a broad range of job titles including CEOs and general managers, heads of operational divisions and World Business Partners (WBPs) and regional associates.

Asia-Pacific Airports is mailed directly to named individuals, based on ACI Asia-Pacific’s own mailing list, which is being continually updated. The magazine also has bonus distribution at all ACI Asia-Pacific events and other key aviation related conferences and exhibitions across the region.

Asia-Pacific Airports is also available as an interactive digital magazine, allowing readers and advertisers to access the publication wherever they are, at any time.