Airline services should be passenger-focused to be sustainable. In this study, we redesign an in-flight service process using a service blueprint while incorporating direct customer perceptions of service experiences. To incorporate these, we apply topic modeling to 64,706 passenger-written online reviews of airline services. Passenger experiences of in-flight services are the sum of experiences from service encounters in all the subsequent steps and we assume that their direct perceptions of their experiences are faithfully contained in the online reviews. Topics extracted from the reviews can be regarded as service encounters based strongly on passenger experiences. Then, the service encounters are reorganized within the framework of a service blueprint. The results show that the complexity, a number of service steps, decreases by 38% compared to the benchmark service blueprint. However, the divergence, a latitude of service steps, should increase for a couple of service encounters. Moreover, we quantitatively analyze the divergence using the probability of word frequency statistically distributed across topics. The in-flight service using the proposed design could be sustainable with respect to customer-focused service while considering direct customer experiences in real-time.
We introduce a new importance-performance analysis (IPA) methodology while making use of direct service experience perceptions represented by online reviews with numerical ratings. The proposed IPA, which we call the text analytics-based IPA (TAIPA), allows the real-time calculation of importance using the probability distribution of word frequency via the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application to online reviews, and of performance using numerical rating values. The importance is also adjusted with the help of a sentiment analysis of online reviews to provide more precise measurements for service experience perceptions. To ensure an evaluation of the entire service process, we employ service encounters, in which service experiences occur and thus most customer perceptions are created, as a set of attributes composed of LDA topics that contain direct perceptions of service experiences. We investigate statistical correlations between TAIPA calculations and typical benchmarks of firm performance in the air-transport industry to verify how effective the proposed TAIPA is with respect to the degree that customer satisfaction is represented. As a primary result, TAIPA is more effective than comparison targets in that it shows stronger correlations with firm performance. TAIPA is specialized in determining which service step (i.e., a one-to-one relationship with a service encounter) needs to be improved. Moreover, TAIPA is flexible in considering multiple competitors.
Aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) has become more important to the air transport industry during the pandemic since it plays a crucial role in improving safety, ensuring profitability, and achieving sustainability in the industry. The growth of the Northeast Asian MRO market is forecasted to be remarkable, making the region the next MRO powerhouse. This study investigates the MRO industry in Northeast Asian countries (China, Japan, and Korea) to gain insights for strategical development of the industry. SWOT analysis was used to understand external macro-environment and internal conditions comprehensively, with comparative analysis then performed to find each country’s competitiveness. SWOT analysis of the external environment of the aviation MRO industry in Northeast Asia finds opportunities from increased competition in the air transport industry and technological development and threats caused by aircraft advancements (less scheduled maintenance checks) and a limited workforce. Internal conditions are analyzed using six factors: cost, workforce, geographic presence, quality with shorter turnaround time, technological advancement, and certification. The results indicate that Korea’s MRO industry has strong human resources but weak technological capabilities. The competitive advantage of the Chinese MRO industry stems from both a large number of aircraft and lower costs. While Japan possesses superior MRO technology, high labor costs reduce their industrial competitiveness. Based on a comparative analysis, this study provides strategic insights into the improvements that can be made in the Korean MRO industry. Since composite MRO of newer aircraft presents a small technological gap which can be overcome with high-quality human resources, Korea should focus its resources and policies on promoting the composite MRO industry due to its high growth potential.
This paper analyzes quality management of aviation safety services in Korea and proposes practical implications for improvement. We look into how quality management is conducted in the Korean aviation industry and confirm aviation authority's efforts for a quality management system. We also compare and analyze international standard ISO 9001 and aviation safety oversight system quality management cases of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with a Korean case. Results find the difference in defining the scope of ISO 9001 management between ICAO/FAA and the Korean authority which causes unnecessary misunderstanding in oversight perception. The Korean aviation authority strives to provide a high level of safety oversight services by educating aviation safety inspectors as well as establishing a quality management system. We believe that our proposals can help Korean aviation safety oversight system secure objective credibility and seek a safe growth and development of the aviation industry.
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