AVIATION

AASL strike Gold at NBE awards

Airport and Aviation Services, (AASL), clinched the gold award at the National Business Excellence Awards 2012 organized by the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka by becoming the winners in the State Services Sector category.

They were the runners up in the same category last year which won them the silver award. The “National Institute of Business Management (NIBM) who were last year’s winners, tied with AASL this year for the winning award.

The glittering awards ceremony was held at Colombo Hilton amidst a large gathering. Last year was the first instance AASL took part in this kind of competition and having proved itself by bagging the silver award in that first instance itself, the company is jubilant about upgrading its performance to winning status in the immediately following year.

This achievement marks a significance because the civil aviation industry in Sri Lanka is celebrating 100 years and AASL is the only industry player to win a national award for business excellence in the centenary year.

The objectives of this competition is to recognize and reward contributions made by business enterprises to the economic progress of the country as well as those that have created capacity for economic growth and employment generation, built sustainable market competitiveness, institutionalized best practices and business excellence and have demonstrated their capacity to invest.

The competitors had been evaluated on Business and Financial Performance, Global Reach, Knowledge Integration, Technological Investment, Capacity Building, Performance Management, Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Airport and Aviation Services functions as an agent of the government and is vested with the responsibility of providing airport services within the geographical extent of the island and providing aviation services within the Colombo Flight Information Region (FIR). It is the successor to the Airports Authority of Sri Lanka and traces a track record of 29 years.

In the public eye it is frequently identified with the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) but the company’s functional reach extends well beyond BIA. It manages all civil airports in the island including the domestic airport at Ratmalana which is now emerging as a city airport for corporate air traffic. The air space within which the company provides air navigation services spans across a large geographical area of 560,000 square Nautical Miles ( approximately 900,000 square kilometers) mostly over the oceanic regions.

As a state owned company AASL enjoys some degree of administrative and financial autonomy to formulate strategic plans and to make speedy corporate decisions as a competitive business entity in order to have an efficient mechanism for the operation of airports and the provision of aviation services.

It is also experiencing stiff competition from the region for the efficient and passenger friendly operation of airports. AASL has now consistently recorded financial success for three years in a row with massive turnovers increasing in magnitude each successive year.

Prasanna Wickramasuriya, the Chairman of the company, rejoicing in the achievement states that “we are proud to be in a position to accommodate even the ultra high capacity modern jets like the A380, after 100 years of the first aeroplane landing in Sri Lanka. But this is only one of our visible successes. Behind the scene our staff is continuously engaged in making the skies above Sri Lanka more safer and a pleasure to fly across.”

Emirates, TAP to codeshare

Emirates and TAP Portugal have announced the start of a reciprocal codeshare agreement enabling passengers from both airlines to benefit from seamless connections effective from December 21st 2012.

The reciprocal codeshare will permit customers to enjoy the convenience of a single combined ticket for Emirates and TAP Portugal-operated flights, in addition to linking Emirates’ frequent flyer programme, Skywards, and TAP’s Victoria frequent flyer programme. The new codeshare services are available for sale, with travel from 21st December 2012.

Under the agreement, Emirates’ flight number will be placed on TAP services from Lisbon to Porto, Faro and Funchal in Portugal as well as Seville, Madrid and Barcelona in Spain. TAP will place its code and flight number on several Emirates’ services between Lisbon and Dubai, to Bangkok, Hong Kong*, Kuala Lumpur* and Singapore.

“This new codeshare agreement with TAP is another key element in our expansion plan across the region. In addition to convenient connections, the reciprocal frequent flyer agreement offers additional benefits for our valued Skywards members by enabling them to earn and redeem their Skywards Miles when flying with TAP,” said Thierry Antinori, Emirates’ Executive Vice President, Passenger Sales Worldwide.

Frequent flyers of both airlines will be able to accrue and redeem Skywards Miles with Emirates and Victoria Bonus Miles with TAP and will benefit from one-stop check-in and baggage transfer to their connecting flight. Mileage redemptions will be available on a reciprocal basis, for both Economy and Business Class flights. Skywards members will be able to accrue Skywards Miles when flying in Economy or Executive Class with TAP.

Oneworld wins two awards

Oneworld has collected two more “best airline alliance” awards – named the World’s Leading Airline Alliance in the World Travel Awards for the 10th year running and retaining the Best Airline Alliance title in the second annual awards presented by Australian Business Traveller.

After last week collecting the Best Airline Alliance awards for the third year running by Global Traveler in the the leading business travel magazine’s GT Tested Reader Survey 2012 Awards, it means that oneworld has retained all three of these leading “best alliance” accolades.

It also holds both alliance awards for the quality of wines served by member airlines - Global Traveler’s Wines on the Wing and Business Traveller’s Cellars in the Sky.

The World Travel Awards have been described by the Wall Street Journal as the “Oscars of the travel industry”. With this year’s success, oneworld now has retained number one spot as its “leading airline alliance’ for a full decade. Among the individual airline winners, American Airlines was named the World’s Leading Airline to North America and also North America’s Leading Airline, while LAN was honoured as South America’s Leading Airline.