Supporting the design of a quality of service scheme for Malaysian Airports

The Malaysian Aviation Commission (MAVCOM) has the role of an independent economic regulator to the civil aviation industry in Malaysia. In fulfilling this role MAVCOM received feedback from airlines, which included concerns about airport performance. MAVCOM, therefore, decided to introduce a quality of service (QoS) regime at Malaysian airports and undertook consultation exercises with stakeholders in 2016-17. Following these consultation exercises, MAVCOM commissioned Steer to support the design of a QoS scheme for the country’s airports.  

As part of the project, Steer undertook a further programme of consultation with industry stakeholders including airlines, ground handlers and the airport operator. We also reviewed existing airport processes and systems and undertook a benchmarking exercise against QoS schemes in place around the world (in Asia, Europe, Australia and Brazil).  

We subsequently identified the most important service quality attribute that impacted the customer experience at the airport to include in the QoS scheme based on their importance to passengers and stakeholders, and a statistical analysis of each attribute’s contribution to the airport’s overall satisfaction score in passenger surveys. For each such attribute, we established the metric against which it would be measured and the targets which needed to be achieved against the metric. 

The proposed scheme was consulted on with the industry and subsequently became the basis of QoS measures implemented at Malaysia’s main Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL). Once the scheme had been specified, Steer supported MAVCOM in developing a roll-out plan, including the operationalisation of the relevant service quality measures that include data collection and processing as well as audit checks. 

Steer was subsequently engaged to specify similar QoS schemes at three other Malaysian airports. Given the very different characteristics of these airports, the schemes were tailored to focus on the most relevant service quality issues at each. A similar process of stakeholder consultation, scheme design and further consultation was followed for each airport.