Key Customers Meeting and Workshop: industry consultation for safer and more efficient flights in the Hungarian airspace

A professional forum was held in Budapest with the participation of pilots, navigation and ATC experts from five international airlines – Austrian Airlines, easyJet, Etihad, Ryanair and Wizz Air –, the representatives of Budapest Airport and HungaroControl’s air traffic controllers, flight safety and ATM system design specialists. Upon HungaroControl’s initiative, key aviation stakeholders met for the third time to jointly discuss and analyse issues related to increasing flight safety and improving air navigation services, work processes and procedures. The findings of this year’s two-day forum facilitate both the intensification of communication between pilots and air traffic controllers and efficient route and procedure design, and thus make aviation more economical and environmentally friendly in the airspace controlled by Hungarian air traffic controllers.

At the third Key Customers Meeting and Workshop organised within the framework of the HungaroControl Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction Programme, air traffic controllers, airline pilots as well as flight safety and navigation experts discussed the current topics in three working groups. This year, the working groups were organised around the three ATC units, i.e. ACC, APP and TWR. The key topics of the working groups included the planned cross-border extension of Free Route Airspace; the fine-tuning of the recently introduced arrival procedures in the Budapest terminal area; and issues related to single-runway operations at Budapest Airport.

HungaroControl launched its service quality and customer satisfaction programme with the first customer satisfaction survey in October 2013 and the first Key Customers Meeting and Workshop in November 2013. The more than five hundred airline pilots who participated in the survey in 2016 confirmed that HungaroControl’s perceived service quality is improving steadily, reaching the average rating of 4.63 on a scale of 5. Among the 18 airlines participating in the survey this year, key respondents include the pilots of Qatar Airways, Pegasus Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Wizz Air, Etihad Airways, Ryanair, TAROM and British Airways.