Hongwei Jiang

A study of China’s major domestic airlines’ service quality at Shanghai’s Hongqiao and Pudong International Airports

In a highly competitive market, service quality can be the core competitive advantage for airline’s profitability and sustained development. This paper has investigated the differences in the passengers’ expectations and perceptions of the service quality of China’s four major domestic airlines: Air China, China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, and Hainan Airlines in China’s domestic market. The results will assist airline management to improve service quality by reducing the difference. Surveys were conducted with domestic passengers at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport and Shanghai Pudong Airport in China. The results show that there are significant differences of service quality between passengers’ expectations and perceptions among major Chinese airlines. Passengers consistently rate ‘good safety records’ as the first priority of seven SERVQUAL dimensions, but low price remains the most important factor that passengers consider when choosing a Chinese airline. The conclusions reached in this work suggest that Chinese airlines should consider improving service quality rather than providing cheaper air tickets in order to gain competitive advantage.

Synchronising Design Knowledge and Real-Time Monitoring Information for Aircraft Complex System Diagnosis

With increasing complexity of aircraft systems and various operational environments, fault modes and effects among different hierarchical system levels can be hardly described by accurate physical models. This brings uncertainty in fault location and maintenance. Motivated by the low effiency in trouble-shooting for aircraft complex systems, this study proposes an intelligent diagnostic approach that can synchronize design knowledge and real-time monitoring messages to make full use of available information. An aircraft brake system is selected as a typical electromechanical system with frequent fault occurrence. A multi-level Bayesian network is created based on fault mode and effect analysis. Conjugate distribution is employed to combine prior knowledge and observation for statistical inference update. The proposed method can reduce the diagnostic uncertainty and provide more effective trouble shooting.