The Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport will be joining for the first time a global survey of international airports to gain a better insight into the status and competitiveness of the nation's leading airport, an aviation official said yesterday.

The Airport Service Quality Program, held by the Airports Council International (ACI), conducts an annual evaluation of airports worldwide and ranks the service they provide

Last year, Incheon International Airport of South Korea received the best airport worldwide award for the second year in a row.

The other airports that made it to the top-five list were Hong Kong International Airport, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Singapore Changi International Airport and the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas.

To participate in the survey, participants have to pay a registration fee of US$16,900.

Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) director general Billy Chang (___) said that participating airports will receive 2,000 copies of a questionnaire prepared by ACI.

The questionnaire will come in 10 different languages and must be distributed to passengers of all the flight routes covered by the airport.

Among the collected questionnaires, 370 of them must be found valid, he said.

The survey will evaluate the airport in Taoyuan in 33 service areas, including transportation to the airport, check-in, safety inspections and passenger facilities.

The result of the evaluation will be released in March next year.

Taiwan had never participated in the evaluation and never received an ACI ranking, aviation officials said.

This lack of participation created the misconception that Taiwan did not make it on the ranking because of poor service.

Asked what ranking Taiwan hopes to achieve, Chang said the CAA was working on things that it could improve in the meantime, but admitted that the Taoyuan airport still had a lot of problems.

For instance, when the first terminal was constructed almost 30 years ago, it did not take into account accommodation for transit passengers, Chang said.

The airport has been planning to provide city check-in service a decade ago, but construction of the airport rail system did not commence until last year, he said.

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