The ground handling arm of Etihad Airport Services (EAS), a division of Etihad Aviation Group, has received the internationally-acclaimed Airline Operators Committee (AOC) award for excellence for 2017.

AOC commended EAS Ground for its outstanding customer service performance last year, which resulted in consistently high levels of customer satisfaction during the full guest journey, from check-in to luggage collection at the final destination.

EAS Ground served 31 airlines in 2017, including home carrier Etihad Airways, across Terminals 1, 1A, 2, and 3 at Abu Dhabi International Airport, handling more than 36,000 aircraft movements and approximately 4.5 million guests.

Khaled Almehairbi, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Etihad Airport Services - Ground, said: "The Etihad Airport Services team is immensely proud to receive the coveted Airline Operators Committee award, which recognises our strong performance and accomplishments in 2017.

"During the year, we implemented both established and innovative new programmes to ensure we not only exceeded our targets, but more importantly, satisfied the requirements of our customer airlines and their guests."

Mr Almehairbi added: "Meeting the diverse requirements of our airline customers can be challenging, due to the unique systems they each utilize. To overcome this, we focused on enhancing the capabilities of our employees to ensure they're able to work efficiently across the different platforms and deliver a unique and seamless service."

The overall operational on-time performance (OTP) for EAS Ground's customer airlines was the highest ever in 2017, at 98.6 per cent. OTP is calculated on actual flight arrival and departure times within 15 minutes of the published schedule and takes into consideration a variety of external factors including weather disruption and airspace congestion.

EAS also met the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) targets set by the Airports Council International on waiting time at check-in; efficiency of check-in staff; and the courtesy and helpfulness of check-in staff.

Contributed by Etihad Airways