A chief executive at Sasco, the largest service provider at Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat airport, said passengers should sympathize with the firm, as the poor service they have complained about is the result of both subjective and objective causes.

“We understand how bad customers feel about the below par services,” Dam Thi Mai Huong, deputy director of Sasco, told Tuoi Tre, referring to the newspaper’s recent report that the Sasco store at the terminal sells poor quality food at exorbitant prices.

Huong said she has sent staff to check the service, and reprimanded employees over the issue.

“We want employees to acknowledge that it is the customers who bring the company money from which their wages come,” she said.

The deputy director added that services may fail to be appropriately provided as the terminal receives up to 400 flights per day.

It has been observed that a simple sandwich containing a thin slice of meat and several leaves of lettuce is on sale for VND45,000 at the Sasco store, while a dish of spaghetti with canned beef bologna costs VND79,000. (US$1 = VND21,000)

Both were carelessly prepared and tasted terrible.

The street prices for such items are only VND15,000 and VND45,000, respectively.

But Huong said the prices were determined based on comparison to those from the shopping malls in the city downtown, and also from other airports in the region.

“We should ensure that the prices are not higher than market rates,” she said.

As for the poor preparation of the food, Huong said this is an objective matter.

The bread used to be re-grilled before being serviced, but the company is no longer able to do this because it is required to limit the use of electric appliances as the terminal is being upgraded, she said.

“We also used to serve pho in the airport, but were later asked to stop doing so because there was no cooker hood system at the terminal,” Huong added.

She reiterated that to Sasco, customers are the most important factor.

“We will try to fix the problems, and once the terminal upgrade is completed, the service quality will be increased,” she promised.

Tighten management

In a separate interview, Lai Xuan Thanh, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, said the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) should strengthen management over the businesses that have earned tender to provide services at airports countrywide.

“In their complaints, people do not name the service providers, but say things like ‘services at Tan Son Nhat, Noi Bai, and Cam Ranh airports are awful’, and ‘most expensive in the world’,” he said.

“They blame the terminals while the responsibility must be of the businesses that provide the services.”

Thanh thus urged that the ACV set stricter requirements for the businesses to ensure service quality.

“ACV cannot just allow the businesses to operate at the airports and do what they want.

‘They should be subject to strict monitoring and rules,” he said.