A task force set up to improve the management of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport concluded a review meeting yesterday having reached a consensus that the airport should prioritize strengthening its policy implementation and addressing human errors.
Chang Yu-hern (張有恆), head of the task force set up by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, said the panel had mapped out plans for improving airport management, including gathering information on passenger satisfaction by conducting focus group discussions and opinion polls among airport workers.
Information collected by the task force showed that passengers were most dissatisfied with 16 items, including substandard and overpriced food, defective equipment such as luggage trolleys and unclear directional signs in the transit area.
As every member of the task force was aware of the problems listed in the report, the most important thing is to implement improvements in order to enhance the competitiveness of the airport, Chang said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) said the suggestions for resolving up to 100 problems at the airport raised by airline companies during the meeting were very helpful, but she said human error could help explain why the problems were occurring.
Noting that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has allocated a lot of money to lift the airport into the ranks of the world’s best, Lo said it was evident that money is not the problem and that what matters most is how to improve management of the airport’s staff.
Using a leaking toilet that left part of a terminal flooded and smelly for several hours earlier this month as an example, Lo said even though the airport’s operations control center must have obtained images of the leak from its video monitoring system, nobody made a report on the problem, which she said indicated a management issue.
If the airport fails to address instances of human error, all its efforts to improve efficiency would be in vain, she said.
The latest in a host of problems and scandals that have afflicted the airport was a report this week of a “near miss” that took place on July 15, when a Ukrainian cargo plane nearly collided with a Singapore Airlines (SIA) passenger jet because the Ukrainian pilot reportedly misunderstood the air traffic controller’s orders.
The Ukrainian plane was moving forward when it received an order to wait until the SIA flight carrying more than 200 passengers had taken off. However, the pilot misunderstood the order “hold short of runway 05” as “cross runway 05.”
As the cargo plane moved forward, another air traffic controller saw the danger and ordered it to speed up so that it would be out of the way when the SIA plane took off.
The report said the two planes came within 1,100m of each other, or 11 seconds away from a collision.
However, the Singapore daily Lianhe Wanbao quoted an SIA executive as saying on Thursday that the SIA crew had noticed the Ukrainian plane on the runway and had decided to delay takeoff until it had left the runway. The SIA executive insisted the “near miss” report was not true as there had been no danger at all.
Nevertheless, an airport management investigation concluded that the first air traffic controller should have made certain that the Ukrainian pilot had understood his order and should also have visually confirmed the plane’s position.
An ministry official said the air traffic controller had been moved to another post and was receiving counseling.
“The controller, who had been working in the airport control tower for slightly more than a year, was scared by his own mistake and feels deeply remorseful,” an official said.
In the hope of helping him overcome the trauma and work well in his new post, he said, the airport administration had assigned a psychologist to offer counseling.
The airport administration’s disciplinary panel is scheduled to meet next week to issue a penalty, the official said.
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