Bhubaneswar: Amidst falling customer satisfaction for airport services worldwide the Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) here has received the prestigious Airport Service Quality (ASQ) award for 2018 in the Asia Pacific region.
Awarded for customer satisfaction, the ASQ award is given by the Airport Council International (ACI) to different airports under six categories. The BPIA received the award in the 2-5 million passenger segment while competing with the Chandigarh Airport, Devi Ahilyabai Holkar Airport in Indore, SM Badaruddin II Airport, SS Kasim II Airport (both in Indonesia) and Yichang Sanxia Airport of China.
“It’s a great pride and honour for us. A lot of hard work in the past one-and-a-half years has been put in to reach this level. This will gain BPIA international recognition and will attract more passengers and airlines companies to the airport,” said BPIA director, Suresh Chandra Hota.
The ASQ award assesses a passenger’s response to an airport’s services beginning from check-in to boarding. Even though airport facilities globally obtained the lowest satisfaction score in 2018, the ACI reported the Asia-Pacific and Middle-East airports recorded the highest scores in overall level of satisfaction.
While the BPIA recorded about 14 lakhs domestic passenger movement in 2014 it has shown an astounding growth of 185% with about 40 lakhs passenger reported till last year. Meanwhile international passengers’ movement has also shown a growth of 5.5% in the last two years, rising from about 91,000 passengers to 95,000 in 2018.
“There will be a further increase in numbers as we have already recorded four million passengers by February. The challenge ahead is to provide the same level of satisfaction to these customers and receive the award again next year under the different category,” Hota stated.
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