The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport will strengthen the evaluation criteria for operational reliability items in airline and airport service assessments. This measure comes in response to criticisms that the current evaluation criteria do not adequately reflect consumer inconveniences caused by lengthy flight delays.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport noted on the 2nd that it is revising guidelines for some items in the airline and airport service assessment criteria, including the addition of a new item called 'delay rate per hour.' The new segment for 'delay time unit' is reported to be divided into 2-4 hours (segment 1), 4-12 hours (segment 2), and over 12 hours (segment 3). Currently, flights receive the same score whether they are delayed by 2 hours or 20 hours.
A Ministry official said, 'The longer the delay, the greater the impact on customers, but the existing assessment did not reflect this. We aim to strengthen consumer protection in aviation by revising this part.'
Currently, the items that assess operational reliability consist of punctuality rate (70 points), compliance with business plans (20 points), efforts to improve operational service (10 points), and additional points (5 points). Additional points can be earned for maintaining or increasing domestic flight routes at local airports, with a maximum of 5 points available. The results of airline and airport service evaluations, announced biannually, are reflected in the allocation of new air transport rights for airlines.
The compliance with business plans, which had low evaluative discriminatory power, will be removed from the evaluation criteria, and the weight of the punctuality rate will be reduced. Compliance with business plans is a criterion that deducts points if an airline does not operate according to the flight schedule approved in advance by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport; however, it is known that most airlines receive full points, rendering it ineffective. The punctuality rate is assessed as the ratio of flights operated on time to the planned operational flights.
As air travel demand increases, flight delays are occurring frequently. On the 28th of last month, a Jeju Air flight from Incheon to Da Nang was delayed by 14 hours due to an incident on the Da Nang runway, and in March, an Asiana Airlines flight was delayed by 15 hours when the captain left behind a passport. In March, there was also an instance where a Jeju Air flight was delayed for over 30 hours, and in December of last year, a Korean Air flight from Jakarta to Incheon was delayed for over 19 hours.
There are also expectations that these evaluation changes will lead to enhanced maintenance capabilities for airlines. Professor Kim Kwang-il of the Airline Operation Department at Shilla University stated, 'While this may be a burden for airlines, it will allow consumers to know more accurate delay data for each airline. It could naturally lead to enhanced maintenance capabilities.'
According to the airline airport service evaluation results for 2024, released on the 29th of last month, the punctuality of international flights from 10 domestic airlines was found to average a B rating, which is lower compared to foreign airlines. Only AIR BUSAN received an A rating or higher among the 10 domestic airlines.