By Yun Suh-young
Korean Air, the nation’s largest air carrier, became the first airline company in the world to receive an award for operational excellence of three Airbus planes.
The airline company said Thursday that it received the “A380 Award for Top Operational Excellence” at the A380 Technology Symposium in Dubai, Wednesday, hosted by the European manufacturer Airbus.
Korean Air had received awards for the A330 and A300-600 Airbus planes in the past. It received seven awards for operational excellence for the A330 and six for the A300-600.
With the addition of an award for operational excellence of A380, Korean Air has become the first airline company in the world to receive the Triple Crown honor.
Airbus awards airlines with the best operational excellence of its aircraft every two years based on reliability, which is calculated by the number of flights, the length of flight time and operational performance.
Operational reliability is an international standard of verifying the operations of an aircraft by an airline company. It measures the number of times the aircraft departed within 15 minutes of the designated schedule and divides it by the total number of operations.
A 99.5 percent operational reliability means there were only 0.5 percent of delays or cancelled flights which is a quarter of the global average. A high operational reliability means the airline company is strict on maintenance and safety.
Korean Air currently operates five A380 planes, 23 of A330s and three A300-600s. It plans to introduce five more A380 aircraft by the end of 2014.