Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) published the civil airport service quality standards (draft for soliciting advice) recently to provide recommended service standards for civil airports.

CAAC revealed on Dec. 29th that such standards cover five first-order indexes for services in terms of general aviation, passengers, aircraft, freight and luggage.

Before such standards were stipulated, related departments had carried out practical evaluation and validation targeting 15 domestic airports of different scales in Beijing, Tianjin, Nanchang, Wuhan, Chongqing, Guiyang, Changchun and other cities.

They also assessed services of these airports taking subjective and objective situations into account. Subjective standards depended on passengers' subjective experience and judgment on the services of these airports, while objective standards referred to quantification of key performance indicators in airport service procedures.

According to such objective standards, no more than three cigarette butts should be found on every one hundred square meters of the driveways and pavements outside the airport, vertical distance between lower edge of the ceiling of the terminal building and the ground should be 2.2 meters and passengers should have to wait no more than five minutes to use the toilet.

CAAC hopes such service standards will help standardize service and management of China's civil airports and minimize the gap between airport service and passengers' expectation. According to industry sources, the standards aim at effectively promoting the service level of civil airports on the basis of fully considering passengers' demand and giving priority to passengers' experience and feeling.

(Chinanews.cn December 30, 2005)