The city's Lohegaon airport has been ranked third in terms of airport service quality (ASQ) among India's nine major airports, which are surveyed by the Airport Council International (ACI), a global body of airport operators.
According to the civil aviation ministry norms, a major airport refers to the airport that has an actual passenger throughput i.e. incoming and outgoing travellers, of more than 15 lakh every year.
As of now, there are 14 major airports in the country.
The ASQ survey is a leading airport customer satisfaction benchmark programme with over 190 airports in more than 50 countries surveying their passengers every month of the year. The results are declared every quarter by the ACI.
"Last year, the civil aviation ministry got into a tripartite memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the ACI and the Airports Authority of India (AAI), to facilitate the ASQ survey of all major airports in the country," Pune airport director P S R K Sudhakar told TOI on Wednesday.
Every month, at all participating airports, departing passengers are interviewed about their on-the-day experience. All airports use the same questionnaire and methodology.
The exercise enables the airports to get updated information on their service performance for operational and strategic decision-making.
Over half of the world's top 100 airports participate in ASQ.
"The nine major airports under the survey are managed by the AAI and do not inlcude the PPP consortium model airports i.e. Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, which are surveyed separately by the ACI," he said.
"The AAI is one of the stakeholders in the airports developed through consortiums," he pointed out.
Sudhakar said, "The airports are assessed on 34 different parameters, which define the passenger experience through the airport. Some of these parameters include, waiting time at check-in counters, waiting time at security, number of baggage carts available, waiting time at immigration, courtesy by airport and security staffers, passenger facilitation etc."
Eventually, the surveyed airport is rated on a scale of 5 points, he added.
"Pune airport has received a 3.75 rating for the survey period between July to September," he said.
"This an improvement over the 3.65 rating the airport received in the maiden survey done for the previous quarter between April and June," he added.
"Guwahati and Goa shared the first position with an identical rating of 4 points while Jaipur was rated at second position," said Sudhakar. The other major airports under ASO survey include Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Kozhikhode and Thiruvananthapuram.
The ASQ survey in India is done by the ACI's Hong Kong-based Asia Pacific regional office, which has a total of 94 members operating over 480 airports in 42 countries.
Sudhakar said, "On a global scale, an average rating of 4 points is considered good while the highest rating has gone up to 4.75, scored by the Incheon airport in South Korea."
Over the last couple of years, the Pune airport has added several new facilities including 11,000 sq mtrs of additional space in the form of the new international departures and arrivals terminal buildings on either sides of the old main terminal building.
Facilities like additional conveyor belts for baggage; new parking lots; a couple of imported aerobridges to enable the passengers to move into the aircraft and from the aircraft to the terminal building directly, were added during this period.
Source: : TNN, Jan 19, 2012
