Beijing Capital International Airport has hit back at criticism
from a business website that it was one of the worst in the
world.?
Dong Zhiyi, general manager of the Beijing Capital International
Airport, told Xinhua on Wednesday that official statistics showed
that 86.28 percent of the flights taking off there were on
schedule, refuting claims from Forbes.com that it was the second
worst airport in the world.
"At Beijing Capital International Airport, which is expanding in
preparation for the summer Olympics later this year, just 33
percent of its flights took off on time in 2007, putting it just
behind Brasilia on our list of worst departures," said the article
on the US website on January 14.
Dong said the airport did not deserve its poor ranking, adding
that from June to August last year, when Beijing saw frequent
thunderstorms, 84.88 percent of the flights arrived and left as
scheduled, 9.56 percent higher than the previous year.
Dong said if bad weather occurred around the Beijing Olympics in
August, the airport was fully prepared to take emergency measures
and coordinate the airport and airlines to ease flight delay
pressures.
Sources with China's General Administration of Civil Aviation
(CAAC) North China Air Traffic Management Bureau told Xinhua that
it tightly controlled the total number of flights daily and the
hourly number of flights at peak times. It also conducted a flight
survey every 10 days.
A special working group was established by the CAAC last year to
reduce delays at the country's busiest airport and try to tackle
the problems causing delays. The proportion of delays caused by the
airport was 0.31 percent of the total last year.
Earlier this month, the CAAC just announced at a national civil
aviation conference that it would take eight measures to reduce
flight delays and improve the airline services this year,
including:
-- A two-year block on the expansion or establishment of
branches of airlines reported for poor services after delays or
overbooking, or luggage losses.
-- The cancellation of services that rank among the bottom 20 on
the punctuality lists at Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or other
Olympic-related city airports, and those that have a punctuality
rate below 50 percent.
-- The monitoring of services that airlines provide during the
Olympics period to be taken into consideration in distributing
slots in 2008 and 2009.
From the beginning of last year to early December, Beijing
Capital, the only international airport for China's capital,
handled 50 million passengers, putting it among the world's 10
busiest airports.
"With the new No. 3 terminal building to be completed in
February 2008, three terminals and three runways will be in
operation at the same time, expanding the airport's capacity to 82
million passengers annually and 1,700 flights per day," said
Dong.
(Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2008)
