Royal Brunei Airlines achieves Skytrax 4-star rating
24 July 2019, 3:44 PM
Royal Brunei Airlines (RB) is celebrating the esteemed Skytrax 4-star rating from the international air transport rating organisation following a detailed audit of the airline’s overall quality of products and services standards.
The announcement of RB’s 4-star accreditation was held at the Collaboration Hub, RB Campus. Present as the guest of honour was Yang Mulia Dato Seri Paduka Doctor Haji Abdul Manaf bin Haji Metussin, Deputy Minister of Finance and Economy (Economy), the Acting Minister at the Prime Minister’s Office and Minister of Finance and Economy II, and RB Board Director. RB’s Board of Directors, corporate guests, business partners, travel agents, tour and hotel operators, and staff also attended the event to celebrate the momentous achievement.
Mr Karam Chand, RB’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “It gives me great pleasure to disclose that the National Carrier of Brunei, Royal Brunei Airlines has been certified with the coveted Skytrax 4-Star Airline rating. This star rating was awarded after every aspect of our services and products were audited by experienced airline Auditors using international benchmarks covering some 900 key assessment items. We are delighted and proud to join an exclusive list of 4 star airlines in the world and one of smallest who have achieved such global feat”
“We clearly defined what we stood for and ensure decisions we take support our strategy of service focus and enhanced guest experience. We have received a number of key service awards and it is an honour to be now certified with the 4-star Skytrax award. It is also pleasing to note that for Skytrax’s Top 100 airlines in the world yearly ranking we improved to 66th position this year from 95th ranking in 2016. We were named as one of the top 5 most improved airlines and not long ago top 10 most loved airline in the world.”
“We engaged Skytrax in 2018 to conduct an airline quality audit on RB’s product and service delivery across the business, on both long haul and regional flights and equally importantly our home airport. Since then we made further enhancements to our products and services and maintain high degree of consistency in service delivery by all our front line staff.”
“Supporting the service focus strategy required changes to our aircraft fleet, network and guest facing infrastructure. Last year we completed our fleet modernization program with new technology B787 Dreamliner and A320NEO aircraft. We can confidently say RB is one of very few airlines in the world with an average fleet age of just over two years. This investment is great for our guests as it has helped us maintain very high on time performance of 90%, we offer the latest cabin features and play an active role in reducing carbon emissions.”
“Over the course of the past year, RB’s network has expanded and we introduced more direct flights to a number of key destinations. We have expanded our network from 17 to 25 destinations and soon to 32 including RB Link cities. In November 2017, we introduced scheduled services to Seoul, in April 2018 to Nanning and Hangzhou, followed by non-stop service between Brunei and London Heathrow in October 2018 thus putting us on equal footing with our competitors and has one of shortest elapsed time between Brunei, Melbourne and now Brisbane to London Heathrow. We also introduced Haikou in November, Taipei and Kuching in December, Tokyo in March this year, launched flights to Changsha in April, Brisbane this month and soon we plan to introduce services to Beijing, the new Daxing International Airport. Product innovation such as our recently introduced RB Link flights further cements our position as the National Airline of Brunei and our commitment to our guests and their needs and to the Region.”
“RB’s 4-star rating vindicates the products and services we introduced over the years to enhance the guest experience at every touchpoint. It is also a great testament of years of hard work across the Company by all of our people. This would not have been achieved without the contribution and hard work; from the front-liners to our colleagues in operations, commercial and support departments, who have worked tirelessly to help us achieve our goal and strategically position RB as a globally competitive airline. This and many other achievements over the last few years truly reflects the spirit of RB and her people and our strong desire to help achieve the National objectives with enhanced connectivity, be an enabler of growth in tourism and trade and to be Brunei’s international brand ambassador on a daily basis,” concluded Mr Chand.
Commenting on the 4-Star Airline Rating awarded to Royal Brunei Airlines in a statement, Mr Edward Plaisted, Skytrax Chief Executive Officer said: “This recognises improvements that the airline has introduced over the last 2 years, both in terms of product change and development and enhancement of the front-line staff service. New aircraft and cabin products have played an important part in the quality improvement process. For front-line staff service, we look of course for good service levels, but a key factor for the 4-Star rating is the consistency of service, and we expect Royal Brunei Airlines to ensure this is duly delivered to customers.”
“Royal Brunei Airlines has been certified with the coveted Skytrax 4-Star Airline rating, joining a select group of elite airlines in this prestigious category. This 4-Star Airline rating is a mark of quality distinction that recognises excellent standards of Product and Staff service across different assessment categories for both the Onboard and Airport environment,” the statement added.
Based on the audit findings on the identified 900 key assessment items, RB made a range of products and services enhancements from improved airport and cabin services through collaboration with relevant government agencies, enhanced on board services and products, and a better user interface on RB’s website.
RB website, www.flyRB.com, was enhanced to provide multi-language options to include English, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Additional Malay, Thai and Vietnamese languages are planned for 2019. The website also improved sector display for flight date and price view, cabin class information and provided updated airport information network wide.
New airport services were introduced to enhance guests’ end-to-end experience. RB business guests now enjoys premium lane at RB counters, fast-track security screening services and fast-track airport immigration as well as dedicated special assistance check-in lane for guests in need. Business class guests have access to online reading portal, PressReader, allowing them access to thousands of the world’s most popular titles for their reading pleasure and enjoyment during their flight. The enhancement of airport services also extends to various destinations in RB’s network such as improved lounge services, enhanced check-in process and improved boarding signage.
Onboard cabin products and services underwent significant upgrading with new amenities and improved standards introduced to the overall service. Among these included turn-down flatbed service for long-haul flights on B787 Dreamliner, new signature business class boarding drink, linen tray tablecloths on A320 business class services, new headsets for business and economy class, increased entertainment content for in-flight entertainment, introduction of meal service recovery tags and economy class meal menu with dual language translation. Additionally, meal options for both classes were improved to provide more variety and continuously reviewed to ensure consistency.