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TACA Wins Best Airline Central America Skytrax Award

Dépèche transmise le 23 avril 2009 par Business Wire

TACA Wins Best Airline Central America Skytrax Award

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TACA Airlines won the Skytrax 2009 award in the following categories:

“Best Airline Central America”

“Best Regional Airline”

“Best Cabin Staff Central America and the Caribbean”

“The Skytrax survey, started in 1999, is highly regarded in the industry for its transparency as well as for the rigorous application of rules that guarantee its independence,” said Estuardo Ortiz, TACA’s Executive Vice President and COO. “We are very pleased with the results. It is important to be able to validate that we are working in the right direction listening to our customers and developing products and services based on their specific needs. We view these awards as result of our personnel’s effort and enthusiasm in strengthening our customer service culture making sure that our passengers have a pleasant flight experience.”

This year, 16,241,085 answers were considered from over 97 nationalities. The survey was conducted during an eight month period (August 2008 to March 2009), time in which travelers nominated their airline of choice.

“Skytrax has earned a very prestigious reputation for their 10 years in delivering transparent results. The information is collected through passenger interviews, travel panel interviews, a corporate travel questionnaire, telephone interviews, and selective passenger interviews. Additionally, Skytrax counts on an ISP monitoring system that eliminates multiple entries,” said Ortiz.

Among those aspects that are rated by the passengers in the survey are those related to onboard product, onboard staff service, and ground/airport services. As part of the onboard product the survey looks for passengers input on cabin seat comfort, cabin cleanliness, cabin lighting/ambiance, reading materials, quality of meals, drink selection, among others.

Skytrax’s research also rates onboard service with parameters such as: assistance thru boarding, friendliness of staff, consistency of service across different flights, service attentiveness/efficiency, problem solving skills, and general staff attitudes.

The ground/airport aspects include online booking service, airline web site, online check-in service, airport ticket counters, quality of check-in service, waiting times at check-in, boarding procedures, friendliness and efficiency of ground staff, baggage services, etc.

“We are confident that having the top OTP (on time performance) index in the American continent also contributed to our client’s satisfaction,” finalized Ortiz. “We closed 2008 with an 89.1%.

For information about the awards visit www.worldairlineawards.com.

Skytrax specializes in research services for the airline industry. It is privately owned, based in London, and has worked with more than 210 airlines and 65 airports in recent years. The organization annually conducts two passenger surveys, the World Airline Survey™ and the World Airport Survey™, which have been firmly established during the past 10 years as a source for independent and global industry information.

About TACA Airlines

TACA Airlines has united the American continent, through its three hubs (El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Peru) and a wide route network that serves from Canada to Brazil 38 destinations distributed in 22 countries. It’s fleet is composed of Airbus 319, 320, and 321 aircrafts and new Embraer E190. During 2008, the airline served approximately 5.5 million passengers, operating around 140 daily departures. More information on TACA and its services at www.taca.com.

TACA is an international airline that connects three Americas which strives to offer world-class service that’s welcoming, friendly and efficient for today’s modern traveler

For information, video and downloadable images, visit our News Center: News.TACA.com