Developing a passenger-centered airport: A case study of Urumqi airport in Xinjiang, China

An airport's accessibility, facilities and services are significant components of a passenger-centered airport. Evaluating services in these areas will help identify gaps that need to be closed to improve passenger experience. As an ideal connection point for passengers flying to Europe from East Asia, Urumqi Airport has been approved as an international hub at North west of China. This paper investigates the airport's facilities and services and assess how to develop it into a passenger-centered airport. A questionnaire survey is conducted concerning airport departure, arrival and transfer services. The cloud model is used to evaluate service satisfaction and the extended contributive rule (ECR) method is used to determine the degree of importance of each service item. Results show that passengers have great concerns over the safety, baggage and flight delay services. Services for catering, shopping, airport traffic, flight delay, and Internet need to be improved, among which catering, shopping and flight delay services need to be given priority. The overall satisfaction for Terminal 1 is lower than Terminals 2 and 3.