Indian Ocean airline receives high 4-star rating

An Indian Ocean region airline received a high rating from a United Kingdom-based consultancy, which runs an airline and airport review and ranking site. Air Mauritius, the leading airline in the Indian Ocean, was awarded the prestigious 4-Star professional quality rating by SKYTRAX. Receiving the award were Air Mauritius Chairman, Appalsamy (Dass) Thomas and the CEO, Andre Viljoen by Edward Plaisted, Chairman of Skytrax, at a ceremony held at the Swami Vivekananda International Convention Centre.

Mr. Edward Plaisted said "This 4-Star Airline rating recognizes the improvement in service quality that has been achieved by Air Mauritius across both airport and cabin service operations. Associated with these changes, service concepts in Business Class have recently been upgraded, and complement the many product standard improvements that have been introduced in the past year to enhance customer comfort for both Business and Economy class customers. This 4-Star Airline rating also reflects the fact that Air Mauritius is shortly to confirm replacement of its A340 fleet, and new aircraft entering their fleet will offer full flat seats in business class, and latest inflight entertainment systems and Audio Video On Demand (AVOD)."

Receiving the highly coveted Award jointly with Mr. Viljoen, Mr. Thomas said "I am delighted to be receiving this Award together with the CEO and on behalf of all of us at Air Mauritius. The 4-Star Status places Air Mauritius in another league – among the World's best 40 Airlines. It is also testimony to the great work accomplished over the past years by the Board, Management and all Team Members to take the airline to further heights. We now need to continue our efforts in order to sustain the improvements made and continue to deliver value to our Customers. This is the only way to remain in the game in this highly competitive industry."

Andre Viljoen, who spearheaded the airline's recovery and sustainability program known as the 7-Step Plan, stated that he was equally delighted with the Award of the 4-Star Status to the airline. "We have come a long way from where we were three years ago. We took some tough decisions and revised our business model with the assistance of Seabury APG. Once approved by the Board, we all embraced the 7-Step Plan as OUR PLAN and have kept focusing on it."

He further added "Step 6 was about Customer Experience and we set up a Customer Experience function. We enlisted the support of Ron Kaufman to assist us with an education program for the entire organization. We also set up many project teams to work on the improvement projects. These were rolled out in record time showing in fact the commitment of the whole company to make change happen."

Andre Viljoen stated that the improvements made have now enabled Air Mauritius to reach the 4-Star status. "I am grateful to Skytrax for this recognition and our challenge will now be to constantly deliver 4-Star standards across the whole airline. This is a challenge and a commitment our team is prepared to take."