Air China 
From Singapore Hotels & Singapore Lifestyle
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Air China, owned by Air China Limited and the successor to its predecessor, the old Air China, began operations in 1988. According to "Civil Aviation System Reform Program" approved and passed by the State Department, in October 2002, the old Air China combined China National Aviation Company and China Southwest Airlines and founded China Aviation Group Company. Base on the union air transport resources of the three companies, the new Air China Company was founded. On September 30th, 2004, approved by the national assets supervision committee of the State Department and as the main air transport company controlled by China Aviation Group, Air China Limited was founded in Beijing in due form, with 23000 employees, a total registered assets of 6.5 billion RMB and the paid-up capital of 9.433 billion RMB. On December 15th, 2004, Air China had successfully made its listed stocks appeared in Hongkong (stock code 0753) and London (trading code AIRC).
The enterprise logo of Air China consists of an artistic phoenix, the Chinese version of Air China written by Mr. Deng Xiaoping and the English translation “AIR CHINA”. Phoenix is the divine bird in the ancient Chinese legend and also the lucky bird adored by Chinese people since the ancient times. According to the record in “Shan Hai Jing”: “the phenix, born from an oriental country called Junzi, flies across the great Kunlun Mountain and over all the oceans. Where she flies she could bring luckiness and peace.” The logo of Air China is the phenix, at the same time it is also the artistic transfiguration of the word “VIP”. The color of it is the traditional Chinese red which implies luckiness, roundness, auspiciousness, happiness and expresses Air China personnel’s sincere passion of serving the society and endless pursue of the safety enterprise. The enterprise culture issued by Air China at the end of 2005 had service as its masterstroke and gave a full expatiation of Air China’s sense of worth in the new era. The desire and orientation of Air China is “an air company with international reputation”, the connotation of which is to realize four strategic targets, i.e. being recognized by major passengers, being the most valuable in China, having the strongest power of profit earning and having competitive power in the world; the enterprise spirit emphasizes “serve the world with a warm heart, guide the future by innovation”; the enterprise mission is “meet the requirements of customers, create mutual values”; the enterprise sense of worth is “make a high level of service, get the universal approval of the public”; the service notion is “reassurance, satisfaction, easiness, sensation”. The enterprise culture of Air China has expressed the notion of broadcasting love all over the world and pursuing excellent service quality.
Air China is the only airline company which carries the national flag to fly. It has the first rank of brand value among domestic airline companies (the world brand laboratory evaluated it in 2006 as 18.896 billion RMB), and it is among the leading position at the aspects of air passenger transport, freight transport and related service etc. As is known to all, Air China takes the responsibility of special plane task for Chinese national leaders who go abroad for visits and foreign leaders and governmental leaders for their Chinese visits. The headquarter of Air China is located in Beijing, and it also has several branch companies such as Southwest, Zhejiang, Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Tianjin, Guizhou, Tibet branch and Shanghai base, Huanan base. It also owns project technology branch company, business plane branch company, Ameco, China International Freight Transport Airline Co. Ltd. and Beijing Air Food Company. Air China also shares the equity of Shenzhen Airline, Cathay Pacific Airline etc. and is the biggest stockholder of Shangdong Aviation Group Co. Ltd., controls Macao Airline Co. Ltd. Up to the end of December 2005, Air China which owns 176 planes with the major type of Boeing and Air Bus can reach 22 countries and districts, among which there are 36 international cities and 70 domestic cities and there are 4,160 periodical flights per week.
Air China has a strong ability in union route transport in and abroad and a wide sales network. In China, when Air China is continually acting as Beijing hinge, in recent years it begins to strengthen several regional hinges such as the Southwest with the center of Chengdu, Eastern China with the center of Shanghai, Southern China with the center of Guangzhou etc. In the meanwhile, in order to strengthen the international union transport ability, Air China attaches great importance on cooperation with foreign airlines, and it has signed code sharing agreement with 11 domestic and foreign airlines, i.e. Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines, Finnair, Turkish Airlines, United Airlines, ANA, dragonair, Macao Airlines, Shandong Airlines and Shanghai Airlines. There are 1,210 Code sharing flights per week. In May 2005, Air China signed to join in the biggest aviation union Star-field Union Understanding Memorandum. The rich domestic flight courses, the most international flight courses and the code sharing cooperation with domestic and foreign airlines make Air China’s flight course network average and universal in which the domestic supports the international, the international eradiates the domestic, which could offer domestic and foreign customers convenient non-stop flight and stop flight service. Up to the end of 2005, Air China has 102 sales departments in and abroad, 10,000 dependent sales deputies among which 3,000 are domestic. It has also developed 2,105 direct sales clients, 115 sales nets which composes a strong and powerful sales network. In order to strengthen the market sales and make the sales channel more multivariant, at present Air China has made electric tickets and online sales business available in many domestic cities, which can offer customers convenient and fast ticket purchasing service. Air China owns an extensive client group with high quality. 71% of the guests who take Air China flights are business and commercial passengers. Air China has become the first choice for many clients from Chinese governmental organizations and companies. The Frequent Passengers Club of Air China has active and faithful members who have reached 3.01 million people until the end of 2005. In August 2004, Air China has become the sole and formal airline partner of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In order to meet the requirements of the advanced clients, Air China has made a huge investment on the innovation of the hardware and software equipments such as the first class and business class seats of 15 wide body long-distance planes like B747－400, B747－400COMB1 and A340－300 etc. After innovation, the new first class and business class seats that can be leveled and the entertainment service has met the satisfaction of business and commercial people who pursue high quality service.
Air China possesses a team of pilots and steward with excellent business technology, precise working style and good service. Among more than 2600 pilots, there are 131 meritorious pilots who have piloted more than 20,000 hours safely, 542 golden prize pilots who have piloted more than 16,000 hours safely. Air China piloting team has got many prizes such as “International Civil Aviation Organization Honorary Medal”, “National Safe Production Advanced Collectivity”, “Safe Piloting Example Unit” etc. Air China is famous for its ever safe record. Among more than 3200 air stewards who work for passenger plane, including stewards with Japanese, Korean and German nationality, most graduated from different academies, have good professional quality and hardworking spirit. They are the best friends on the blue sky for passengers. They persist to put forward the “Four Heart” project – to make passengers reassured, satisfied, easy and moving. Their service quality has always been praised by passengers.
The planes of Air China own a professional and standardizing technical guarantee. Air China has set up project technology branch which consists of 6 bases, 3 joint ventures, 3 centers, 113 aviation stations and more than 8000 engineers and technicians. The maintaining project personnel team with excellent technique and working style has offered well performed and safe planes for the piloting safety of Air China, and has ensured a large amount of flight maintaining task everyday, in the meantime, they have also offered high quality maintaining service for more than 80 airline companies in the whole world. Since the end of 1980s till now, the team has achieved the breakthrough of nearly 20 national maintaining projects and more than 50 scientific and technological advancing prizes issued by national and provincial ministries and commissions. Ameco joint managed by Air China and Germany Lufthansa is the civil airplane comprehensive maintaining enterprise with the largest scale in China. It is also the first airplane maintaining company which has been approved by CAAC, FAA and EASA and got the maintaining license issued by 12 countries. It can offer flight course maintaining, heavy repair and various kinds of engines repair service of Beoing and Air Bus series planes for domestic and foreign clients.
Operation controlling center, the commend backbone of Air China flight operation, commands Air China flights all over the world. Operation controlling center makes use of computer piloting plan system, collects information from plan capability database, the world navigation database, the world airports database and high altitude weather database, chooses good flight course, makes piloting plan, grasps plane capability, confirm piloting qualification and strictly hold the pass. Air China has developed on its own the operation management system, integrated satellite telephone system, space data communication system and shortwave wireless system, which made it the first airline company with the super long-distance supervision capacity in the country. Especially in 2004 after the use of shortwave communication system, the supervision network which has Beijing and Lhasa as the very center, covers the Asian continent, the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean in all orientation, all space-time and all weather and stretches to arctic pole area.
Air China has offered high quality ground service for 23 foreign airlines, 4 domestic aviation group and airlines at the Capital Airport, which occupies 65% of ground service of the Capital Airport. Ground service includes passengers enter and departure service, special passenger service, VIP passenger and “two class” passenger service, passenger luggage service, flight carrying balance service, flight departure system service, station load and unload service, cabin cleaning service etc., altogether 3 species 13 service items. Ground service department of Air China which takes responsibility of this task have more than 2900 employees, among them there are more than 55% young employees, nearly 40% employees who have college and above diploma. The assets of more than 500 ground equipments and special vehicles possessed by this department can reach about 0.2 billion RMB. It is the aviation ground service organization with the largest scale and strongest guarantee capacity of China civil aviation.
The strict training on pilots carried out by Air China guarantees the piloting safety and high quality service. The piloting training center organized by Air China training department is the earliest teaching and training organization that uses whole mission piloting simulation plane and computer basic training machine to hold pilots training. As for Boeing series planes, it already has the comprehensive training capacity of carrying out different plane modes training for pilots, retraining periodically and piloting examination; the piloting training team which has its base located at Tianjin Binhai International Airport has two Boeing 737-300 planes which is specially used for pilots training. Its steward training center is the first multi-function training base in China for training air steward. The instructors of the center possess the technical title of top grade steward, has CRM teaching qualification and instructor qualification approved by CRM training. Except for systematic training on Air China steward, the center has trained more than 80 thousand students for nearly 40 domestic and foreign airline companies and it has also offered training service for many other trades such as post office, restaurants, railway, highway transport, bank, hospital, insurance and telecommunication etc.
The safe management of Air China sees new development under the new situation. Base on inheriting the safe management distillation such as “Four Stricts One Guarantee” (strict organization, strict training, strict discipline, strict working style, make full use of the guarantee function of mental and political work), Air China persists to have training as base, supervision as guarantee, information as method, to make management in advance, turn experience management into scientific management, establish and perfect the long effective system of the safety work, ensure the piloting safety, air defending safety and aviation ground safety. Air China further gives prominence to the authorized function of “Operating Pamphlet”, strives to create the environment and atmosphere of “legal safety”; pay attention on the improvement of the three team i.e. piloting, plane business, transport controlling, establish operating executive officer, set up inspector team, strengthen the establishment of computer safe information system, build stable base for safety. For 51 years, the flight path of Air China planes has covered more than 100 countries and districts, piloted more than 5 million hours safely, carried more than 0.4 billion passengers, carried out more than 5000 times of special plane tasks for national leaders, the excellent technology has got wide reputation. Air China has not only created the world first class safe piloting record, but also created the miracle of 40 years’ safe piloting on the flight course from Chengdu to Lhasa which has the well-known difficulty of piloting and was used to be seemed as “Air Forbidden Area” by international civil aviation field.
The management of Air China has been obviously improved and its brand value has been further enlarged. Air China actively puts forward “Four Heart” service projects and carries out four strategy of “being recognized by major passengers, being the most valuable in China, having the strongest power of profit earning and having competitive power in the world”, persists in connotation style development, develops two projects of organization style change and enterprise culture, which has made the management of Air China stepped to a new stage. Since 2003 the profit earning level ranked the first in China civil aviation field continuously for three years, the brand value of Air China has been further presented. In 2004 and 2005, Air China got “Clients Satisfaction High Quality Prize” of the airline company which carries more than 15 million passengers in the “passengers talk about civil aviation” activity; in June 2006, Air China has been appraised by the world brand laboratory the 32nd of China 500 most valuable brands. Its brand value is 18.896 billion RMB, ranked the first in domestic aviation service field and it is the only transport service enterprise among the domestic 29 brands which possess “the world influence”; Among the 100 great Chinese companies which come into the market appraised by the famous American grade evaluating organization Standard & Poor, Air China ranks as the 16th, which is the first of China civil aviation. Air China brand has been jointly appraised as one of Chinese ten international brands by Financial Times of Great Britain and American McKinsey Management Consulting Company; in September 2005, Air China got the prize of “Chinese ten national brands mostly favored by the public”; on December 19th, Air China got the “Chinese brand annual prize No.1” of 2005 Chinese brand annual prize evaluation activity held by the world brand laboratory. The fast exaltation of brand influence reflects that the enterprise management of Air China has been improved and its comprehensive strength has been further reinforced.
Air China will take the management notion of “safety first, passengers upmost, trust the root”, take the mission of “meet the requirements of customers, create mutual value”, pursue the enterprise sense of worth of “make a high level of service, get the universal approval of the public”, sincerely offer the customers “reassured, satisfied, easy, moving” service, take continuous step forward the target of the airline company of “being recognized by major passengers, being the most valuable in China, having the strongest power of profit earning and having competitive power in the world”, up to 2010, realize the target of keeping the profit earning capacity the first in China, entering the world preceding 15 companies by management scale, standing among European and Asian big airline companies.
