Air China

Air China Limited is abbreviated as "Air China" and its predecessor, the old Air China, was founded in 1988. According to "Civil Aviation System Reform Program" approved and passed by the State Department, in October 2002, the old Air China combined China National Aviation Company and China Southwest Airlines and founded China Aviation Group Company. Based on the joint air transport resources of the three parties, the new Air China Company was founded. On September 30th, 2004, approved by the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of State Council (SASAC) as the main air transport company controlled by China Aviation Group, Air China Limited was founded in Beijing in due form, with 23,000 employees, registered capital of RMB 6.5 billion and the paid-up capital of RMB 9.433 billion. On December 15th, 2004, Air China successfully listed in Hong Kong (HKEx: 0753 and London (trading code: AIRC). With excellent profitability, Air China has made profits for seven consecutive years since 2001, which is the leading position in China's civil aviation industry.

The enterprise logo of Air China is an artistic Phoenix pattern, the Chinese version of "Air China Limited" written by Mr. Deng Xiaoping and its English translation "AIR CHINA". The Phoenix is a divine bird in the ancient Chinese legend as well as the lucky bird adored by Chinese people since ancient times. According to records from "Shan Hai Jing", the phoenix came from an oriental country called Junzi; she flies across the great Kunlun Mountain and over all the oceans; wherever she flies, she brings auspiciousness and peace. The logo of Air China is the phoenix and it also is the artistic transfiguration of the word "VIP". The color is the traditional Chinese red which implies auspiciousness, completion, peace and happiness, and expresses Air China's sincere passion to serve the society and endless pursue of the safety enterprise. Air China's corporate culture emphasizes service and transcends its values in the new era. The desire and orientation of Air China is an air company with an international reputation, the connotation of which is to realize four strategic targets of achieving leading competitiveness in the world, continuously developing and steadily increasing profits and providing excellent and unique travel experiences for passengers. Its enterprise spirit emphasizes "serve the world with a warm heart and guide the future by innovation". Its enterprise mission is to "meet the requirements of customers and create mutual values". Its enterprise sense of worth is to "make a high level of service and get the universal approval of the public". Its service notion is "reassurance, satisfaction, easiness, and sensation". The enterprise culture of Air China has expressed its notion of spreading love all over the world and pursuing excellent service quality.

Air China is the only airline company which carries the national flag. It became a member of Star Alliance in December 2007 and it is also the airline partner of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It has the first rank of brand value among domestic airline companies (the world brand laboratory evaluated it RMB 23.523 billion in 2007) and it leads domestic counterparts in passenger and freight air transport and related services. It is known to all that Air China takes the responsibility of special plane task for Chinese national leaders visiting abroad, and foreign leaders and governmental leaders visiting China, which demonstrates the exclusive status as the national flag carrier. With the headquarters located in Beijing, Air China has several branch companies such as Southwest, Zhejiang Province, Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Tianjin, Guizhou Province, Tibet and bases in Shanghai and Southern China. It also owns a project technology branch, a business plane branch, Aircraft Maintenance & Engineering Corporation (Ameco Beijing), China International Freight Transport Airline Co. Ltd. and Beijing Air Food Company. Air China also holds shares of Shenzhen Airline and Cathay Pacific Airline. It is the biggest stockholder of Shangdong Aviation Group Co. Ltd., and controlled Macao Airline Co. Ltd. until the end of March 2008. Air China owns 224 Boeing and Airbus planes operates 243 routes covering 28 countries and districts, among which there are 69 international routes, 6 regional routes and 168 domestic routes. It provides more than 6.000 weekly flights and offers 1 million seats. By traveling with Air China, passengers can easily reach 81 domestic destinations and 42 international and regional destinations through its strong and balanced global route network with Beijing as the major hub.

Air China has successfully established cooperative partnership with 20 well-known airlines globally. On December 12th 2007, Air China formally joined Star Alliance, the world's largest airline alliance, which further expands its service to 897 destinations in 160 countries and enables it to offer passengers more convenience and benefits.

Air China is committed to providing passengers with "Four Heart" services of reassurance, satisfaction, easiness and sensation. Air China PhoenixMiles, the frequent passenger program, has the longest history in China. Air China is the first domestic civil airline to launch "Forbidden Pavilion" first class and "Capital Pavilion" business class, the two-class services in medium-to-long distance flights centering on "lie-flat seats" and "whole journey valued service" experience, which provides the passengers with valued, comfortable and convenient travel space and considerate service. Air China owns an extensive high-quality client group and has become the first choice for many clients from Chinese governmental organizations and companies. The members of Frequent Passengers Club of Air China have reached 6.28 million as of the end of 2007. It also introduced in 2007 the new version of frequent passenger logo and the "Phoenix Junior" children card, the first children mileage accumulation card in domestic civil aviation industry.

Air China has a strong domestic and international transport capacity and a powerful sales network. Its abundant domestic routes, the largest number of international routes as well as the code-sharing with different airlines both at home and abroad, has resulted in a balanced and extensive air route network layout with domestic routes supporting the international routes and international routes supporting domestic routes. Air China has set up 85 sales departments inland and overseas, 157 sales outlets, more than 27,000 sales deputies, more than 2,000 agreed key accounts, as well as 27 direct overseas sales websites. It has opened on-line check-in service in 36 cities including Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Dalian, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Qingdao and Ningbo. Air China offers convenient non-stop and transfer travel service for Chinese and foreign passengers.

Air China has a team of pilots and stewards with excellent business technology, precise working style and good service skills. Among 2,875 pilots, there are 369 meritorious pilots who have piloted more than 20,000 hours safely, and 800 golden prize pilots who have piloted more than 16,000 hours safely. Air China's piloting team has received many prizes such as the "International Civil Aviation Organization Honorary Medal", "National Safe Production Advanced Collectivity", and the "Safe Piloting Example Unit". Among more than 6,166 air stewards who work on the passenger planes, including stewards with Japanese, Korean and German nationality, most have graduated from different academies with good professional skills and hardworking spirit. They are the best friends to passengers in the blue sky. They consistently put forward the "Four Heart", meaning reassurance, satisfaction, easiness and sensation. Their service quality has always been praised by passengers.

The planes of Air China own professional and standardizing technical guarantees. Air China has set-up project technology branches with Beijing as the headquarter, which consist of 7 maintenance bases (in Chengdu, Chongqing, Hanzhou, Tianjin, Huhehaote, Shanghai and Guiyang), 4 affiliate enterprises, 79 domestic maintenance centers and 45 international maintenance centers. Thus Air China has established a maintenance network covering both inland and overseas. It has been approved by CAAC, FAA and EASA and has received maintaining licenses issued by 18 countries. With 9 major hangars together with advanced equipment and facilities, it is able to conduct maintenance on all Boeing and Airbus series. It can offer flight course maintenance to almost all Boeing and Airbus aircrafts, and is also able to provide repair and overhaul for Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney and the CFM56 engines. It has nearly 10,000 annex repair and overhaul capabilities. Air China's maintenance team includes more than 9,000 engineers and technicians. They not only offer well performed and safe planes for the piloting safety of Air China, but also ensure transportation capacity. With their excellent techniques and first-class service, they have won Air China the approval and trust from more than 80 airlines in the world. Since the end of 1980s until now, the team has been awarded nearly 20 national maintaining projects and more than 50 scientific and technological advancing prizes issued by national and provincial ministries and commissions.

The operation controlling center, which is the organizing and coordinating backbone of the Air China flight operation, commands Air China flights all over the world. It has set up overseas controlling branches, domestic administration centers and some professional technical departments. Its main responsibilities include managing flight operation, operational manuals, aircraft performance and navigational information materials, coordinating tasks relevant to operation security together with related aviation administrative departments, air traffic control departments and airport authorities; organizing and coordinating the secure operations of day-to-day flights, overtime flights, charter flights and special mission flights, and participating in the security coordination of special plane tasks and in the coordination and command of various corporate emergency managements. One of the most important tasks of the operation controlling center is to collect information from computer piloting plan systems, plan capability databases, the global navigation database and airport databases, and high altitude weather databases. This allows the operation controlling center to prioritize flight courses, make piloting plans, grasp plane capabilities, confirm piloting qualifications and perform strict checks.

Air China offers high quality ground service for 35 foreign airlines, 3 domestic aviation groups and airlines at the Beijing Capital International Airport, which occupies 55% of ground service of the Airport. Ground services include passengers' entry, departure and transit services, special passenger services, irregular flight passenger services, passenger luggage services, tarmac load and unload services, cabin cleaning services and supply of various ground equipments and special vehicles. Air China has operated full check-in via Beijing with more than 60 airports at home and abroad. After joining the Star Alliance, it jointly opens EDI full check-in services within the other 22 members, which offers great convenience for passengers transferring in Beijing. Through vigorous efforts, currently Air China is the operating center loading distribution in 26 domestic airports and secures nearly 170 flights each day, which makes it the first domestic airline using the "center loading distribution" work mode. The ground service department of Air China has more than 5,700 employees. The assets of over 3,500 ground equipment pieces and special vehicles owned by this department are worth over RMB 320 million. It is the aviation ground service organization with the largest scale and strongest guarantee capacity in China civil air industry.

The strict training on pilots carried out by Air China guarantees the piloting safety and high quality service. As the training base of Air China, the training department has under it five grass-roots units: the piloting training center, the piloting training team, steward training center, ground training center and training assistance center. The piloting training center has world-class training capability and scale, being equipped with strong instructors group, rich teaching experience and first-class training facilities. The piloting training team, which has its base located at Tianjin Binhai International Airport, applies the most advanced real-plane training mode with two Boeing 737-300 planes being specially used for pilots training. This team assumes the education and management of newly employed pilots of Air China. Its steward training center is the first large-scale multi-function training base in China. The instructors in the center have the title of top grade stewards, IATA teaching qualification and instructor qualification approved by IATA CRM training. Except for systematic training of Air China stewards, the center has trained more than 80,000 students for nearly 40 domestic and foreign airline companies. It has also offered training service for many other trades such as post offices, restaurants, railways, highway transport, banks, hospitals, and insurance and telecommunication companies. With its rapid development, Air China's training also enters into a period of fast growth. Moreover, the University of Air China formally began construction on April 27th 2007, which will be Air China's large-scale modern training base. The existing training department will gradually become the University with promising prospects and outstanding training capability.

The safe management of Air China makes new headway under the developing circumstances. On the basis of strict management, scientific prevention and effective control, it gradually introduces the concept of systematic management, strengthens the construction of rules and regulations, carries forward the information of safety management and vigorously improves the three teams of piloting, plane business, and transport control. This will create the environment and atmosphere of "legal safety", establish and perfect the long-effective mechanism of safety work, and ensure piloting safety, air defending safety and aviation ground safety. For 53 years, the flight path of Air China's planes has covered more than 100 countries and districts, piloted more than 6 million hours safely, carried more than 240 million passengers, and performed more than 5,000 special plane tasks for leaders of the party and the state. Their excellent flying skills have received a good reputation. Air China has not only created the first class safe piloting record in the world, but also has 43 years (since 1965) of safe piloting on the flight course from Chengdu to Lhasa, which has the well-known difficulty of piloting and used to be deemed the "Air Forbidden Area" by the international civil aviation field.

The management of Air China has been expanded and its brand value has been further enlarged. Air China actively puts forward the "Four Heart" service projects, carries out the four major strategies, adheres to the connotation mode of development, implements the two projects of organizational restructuring and corporate culture construction. Thus the management of Air China as a whole has been raised to a new level. As the only elected civil aviation enterprise in China, Air China has been listed among the World Top 500 Brands 2007, which marks the brand of Air China as one of the world-class brands. In June 2007, Air China has been appraised by the World Brand Laboratory as the 27th of China's 500 most valuable brands, and ranked first in the domestic aviation service field. In 2003, 2004 and 2005, Air China got the prize of "High Quality Customer Satisfaction" for airline companies carrying more than 15 million passengers in the activity of "Passengers Opinion on Civil Aviation", and was also awarded "Golden Prize for Customer Satisfaction". The Air China brand has been jointly appraised as one of "China's Top Ten International Brands" by the Financial Times of Great Britain and American McKinsey Management Consulting Company. It has been ranked as the "Best Chinese Airline" by industry magazines such as Business Journey and TTG for three consecutive years; it has also been named as "2007 Best Chinese Airline", "Greatest Explorer" and "2007 Best Corporate Public Image Award" respectively by sohu.com, baidu.com and tencent.net. It has won the title of "Top 25 Exemplary Annual Brand of China – Brand China Huapu Award" in the selection of brand china (2006-2007). On December 28th 2007, Air China got the "Chinese Brand Annual Prize No.1" in Chinese brand annual prize evaluation activity held by the World Brand Laboratory. The fast growth of brand influence reflects that the enterprise management of Air China has been improved and its comprehensive strength has been further reinforced.

Air China will continuously take the management notion of "safety and passengers first with trust at the root", follow the mission of "meeting the requirements of customers and creating mutual value", pursue the enterprise sense of worth for "having a high level of service and get the universal approval of the public", and sincerely offer customers " reassurance, satisfaction, easiness and sensation". It will make continuous steps forward towards its strategic goal of "achieving leading competitiveness in the world, continuously growing development impetus and steadily increasing profits, and providing remarkable and unique travel experiences for passengers", to stand among world leading large-scale network carriers in the global aviation industry by 2017.

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