Services key to airline recovery

Unable to stop the bleeding, the three Chinese State-owned airlines are being kept alive with huge infusion of fresh capital from the government and new credit lines from banks.

While they are lying in their sick beds, there has not been any shortage of analysis and study of their problems by industry experts and financial analysts. The airlines themselves have also been talking to the press, mostly in bits and pieces, about their revival plans.

The most urgent task facing the management of these corporate patients seems to be raising enough money to stay in business. For instance, China Eastern, widely regarded as the sickest of the trio, which includes Air China and China Southern, has debt exceeding the value of its assets. It cannot generate enough income from operation to cover costs and service debts.

Their quest for cash has raised the question of continuation. More and more industry experts are asking if the government is throwing good money after bad in supporting these airlines, which have yet to demonstrate that the cost cutting, route restructuring and other business promotion measures they took are producing results.

All consumers care about is the service these airlines can offer. If we accept that the ultimate goal is to win the support of consumers, then the crux of the airlines' revival plans must be on the quality of service.

To be sure, these State-owned airlines have all done a valiant job in coping with the explosive growth in air travel in the past few decades. But the quality of service they offer has been unnecessarily patchy and occasionally infuriating.

What has irked frequent travelers most is their failure to correct some of the long-standing procedural shortcomings, which may seem trivial to the airlines' management but is irritating, and even frustrating, to customers. Sometimes, doing something as simple as buying an air ticket can be a time-consuming and temper-rousing chore.

The new management at China Eastern has talked about the need to revamp the airline's online ticket sales system. Indeed, too large a proportion of tickets were sold by highly efficient e-ticket sales agents, who charge a tidy commission at the expense of the airlines. If past record is any proof, there is really very little the e-ticket agents should be worrying about.

Forget the arcane world of high technology. Buying a ticket the traditional way at the counters in Shanghai's Hongqiao airport, China Eastern's home base, can test the patience of even the most forgiving patron.

The traveler in a hurry would wish he had the gambler's instinct for picking the fastest moving line. In a supermarket, you can at least judge the speed of process by the contents in the baskets of the people in the line. At Hongqiao, a simple query or request can cause the sales person to disappear for an inordinately long time before returning to say that she can't be of any help. Believe me, it happened to me more than once, and I felt sorry for the guys standing in line behind me.

I am not particular about in-flight service. But a petite friend of mine told me that in a flight out of Shanghai, a group of stewardesses watched while she struggled to lift her overweight carry-on baggage on to the overhead storage bin.

Of course, we understand that the airlines cannot be held responsible for some hiccups such as flight delays and cancellations. But if State-owned airlines fail to convince the traveling public that they are serious about improving services, they have little ground to ask for more government subsidies. Perhaps government money and efforts can be better spent on creating an environment to facilitate greater private sector participation in the industry.

E-mail: jamesleung@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/28/2009 page8)