OREANDA-NEWS. January 29, 2013. Shandong Airlines celebrated its 18th anniversary of flights. A simple but warmhearted welcoming ceremony was held in Jinan base to celebrate this important moment. The ceremony was attended by Shandong Airlines Group's leadership including chairman and president Ma Chongxian, party secretary Zhang Xingfu and vice president Yu Haitian etc. On the day, individual welcoming ceremonies were also held in Qingdao, Yantai, Xiamen and other branches, reported the press-centre of Shandong Airlines.

Since its inception 18 years ago, Shandong Airlines has been continuously growing thanks to the unremitting efforts of all the staff and has always maintained excellent safety records. With an expanding scale, the company has yielded good economic and social benefits, and been contributing to local and national economic and social development.

After 18 years of development, Shandong Airlines has evolved into an airlines group that leads the air transport industry and covers supporting services such as aircraft maintenance, aviation training, aviation logistics and hotel and catering. The company is based in Shandong and has flights to across the country. In addition to the headquarters in Jinan, Shandong Airlines has set up branches in Qingdao, Yantai, Xiamen and Taipei, and has bases in Beijing, Chongqing and Kunming. With its route network covering more than 60 cities and the surrounding areas domestically, the company has initially formed a route network pattern that 'links the north and the south, connects the east and west, and covers the whole country and surrounding regions'. Currently, Shandong Airlines has over 60 airplanes like Boeing 737 etc. and operates on more than 110 routes with over 2,400 flights weekly and over 13 million passengers annually. Shandong Airlines fleet will have reached 100 airplanes by 2015, looking to transform itself from a medium-sized, region-based airlines with a traditional business model to a large, nation-wide airlines based on a modern business model.

In particular, since the beginning of the '11th Five-Year' phase (2006-2010), Shandong Airlines has been benefiting from the correct guidance of Shandong provincial party committee, Shandong provincial government and the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), and received strong support from China National Aviation Corporation, Air China and other shareholders as well as various circles of the society. The company has been earnestly implementing the scientific outlook on development and unswervingly sticking to the philosophy that upholds safe, innovative, people-oriented and harmonious development. Through actively responding to the impact resulting from global financial crisis, Shandong Airlines has firmly grasped market opportunities to realize comprehensive organizational transformation and continuing improvement of business management. By working hard to forge ahead as a united team, Shandong Airlines has been enjoying an effective rapid development.

“During the '11th Five-Year' period, Shandong Airlines has made brilliant achievements of double-digit annual growth in its main business indicators. It has achieved an annual increase of 20.3% in main business revenue, 24.2% in net assets, 19.7% in ASK, 18.44% in passenger traffic, 19.15% in cargo and mail traffic and 21.9% in total turnover on average.

In recent years, the development of Shandong Airlines has exhibited six distinct characteristics:

Increasingly clear strategic positioning

 “'The strategy of steady growth through centralized diversification with air transport as the core' has become all the more clear. The core business revenues from air transport are maintained at a proportion of more than 90%; rapid growth of aviation maintenance business sees an increase of two percentage points in the business structure; aviation advertising, hotel and catering and other areas remain stable.

Significantly improved asset structure and a fast track of development

The debt to asset ratio was reduced by 12 percentage comparing the beginning and the end of the '11th Five-Year' period. The rapid development of Shandong Airlines has significantly enhanced its status within the industry and has laid a solid foundation for the rapid development during the '12th Five-Year' phase.

Remarkably enhanced scale of strength and ranked as a medium-sized airlines

Fleet size has increased to over 60 airplanes with a relatively reasonable structure and relatively balanced lease rate. Thanks to the increased transport capacity, the company enjoys a rapid growth in passenger traffic and cargo transport, with an annual growth rate of 18.44% in the volume of passenger traffic. As sales increase, the weight of Shandong Airlines in the industry raises.

Effective safety management and control

Shandong Airlines considers safety management and control as a primary task. Through a series of effective measures, the company has maintained several consecutive years of no aviation incidents as serious as needed to be accounted by itself, and continues to keep the record of longest period of no flight incidents accountable to Civil Aviation and the record of 11 consecutive years void of inflight shutdown. Shandong Airlines has been awarded ‘Jinyan Cup’ (‘Golden Wild Goose Award’) and ‘Jinying Cup’ (‘Golden Eagle Award’), the most prestigious award for safety in the industry by the CAAC, and in 2010, won the title of CAAC A-Star Flight Safety.

Smooth progress of internal reform and prominent achievements in party building and team-building

Substantive results have been achieved in terms of organizational innovation. Reform of sector organization has been completed. Through competitive employment system to fill in more than 400 vacancies at the management level, the structure of management staff is further optimized in the aspects of age, education and knowledge. Management model reform, job design, salary reform and other work are conducted in the branches, bases and business departments. Performance management reform is carried out to improve performance appraisal. Therefore, a basic organizational structure and management system has been built to cater to the leapfrog growth in the future. In addition, the model of leadership and the model of core team have been adopted aiming to consolidate the base of soft power for sustainable development. While new progress has been made in party building and ideological and political work, grass-roots party organization building, team building and culture building also proceed with confidence, thus maintaining a stable and harmonious situation.

Significant results achieved in corporate culture construction

Shandong Group Corporate Culture Construction Plan, developed over three years, delineates the concepts of development, existential philosophy, mission, and value systems. The document aims to incorporate corporate culture construction into Shandong Airlines' strategic planning and actual operations. With unremitting efforts from its staff, Shandong Airlines are perseveringly in pursuit of its great vision and mission. To vigorously promote its corporate culture, Shandong Airlines summed up its major deeds including earthquake relief, support to Olympics, National Games and Asian Beach Games, and held a variety of activities to commemorate the 30th anniversary of China's reform and opening up, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC and the 90th anniversary of the founding of the CPC. As a result, Shandong Airlines has promoted a sense of ownership among its employees and further improved its corporate cohesion.

During the first 2 years of the '12th Five-Year' period, Shandong Airlines maintains a good status of fast and steady development, thus laying down a solid foundation for the '12th Five-Year' leapfrog development. In 2011, Shandong Airlines made a good start and achieved excellent results, with passenger traffic exceeding 10 millions, both assets and revenues over 10 billions, and profits over 1 billion. In 2012, in the face of complex and changing internal and external business environment, Shandong Airlines insisted on the main thread of comprehensive upgrading and optimizing, focused on the promotion of the 10 strategic management points and made efforts to solve the three major contradictions that restricted its rapid development. The company continued to build the soft power for scientific development and made active responses. Through hard work and team spirit, the company has achieved scheduled objectives in such areas as safety, efficiency, service, management etc. and yielded good business performance. Shandong Airlines has been listed as China Top 500 Brand for the fifth year in a row, with its brand value reaching 10.575 billion yuan, an increase of 1.92 billion yuan over the previous year.