Visakhapatnam: Visakhapatnam International Airport was adjudged as the third best in the category of airports having passenger footfalls from 15 lakh to 50 lakh a year. Members of Andhra Pradesh Air Travellers Association (APATA) have welcomed the assessment done by the Quality Council of India (QCI).
Airport Authority of India (AAI) had entrusted QCI – a third party – to conduct an independent assessment of 34 airports on terminal building services and facilities along with assessment of airside safety parameters. This assessment was conducted in last December, and Vizag Airport stood third out of the 18 airports in the category.
About 28.53 lakh passengers travelled from the city airport in financial year 2018-19 against 24.81 lakh in the previous fiscal. The movement of aircraft had also recorded a 21 per cent growth with 24,237 flights to and from the airport in 2018-19 when compared to 20,021 in previous fiscal.
APATA chairman K. Kumar Raja informed that the city airport secured 78.9 per cent score, next only to Chandigarh (83 per cent) and Mangalore (79.5 per cent). Earlier, Vizag airport director also announced about the QCI-2018 awards on the official twitter handle. The ranking of airports is based on the overall scores given to the airport by QCI and AAI.
Vizag airport is surveyed, both quarterly and half-yearly period. It comes under Airport Service Survey being conducted by the global body of airport operators, Airports Council International (ACI) on behalf of the AAI on a quarterly basis. Also, the quality of the services is also assessed by the QCI.
ACI, as part of its surveys, checks 33 services such as parking facilities, value for money of parking facilities, restaurant/eating facilities, availability of baggage carts, waiting time in check-in queue line, efficiency of check-in staff, courtesy and helpfulness of check-in staff, waiting time at passport inspection among others in the quarterly survey.
The airports were assessed area-wise with the pre-defined parameters like trolley management, navigation facility, solid waste management, car parking, traffic management. These parameters were extracted from on-ground assessment were evaluated.
