Saturday, February 11, 2017

Singapore Airlines is losing ground?

I received this message from a Singaporean.

Dear Mr. Tan, 

I have been been wondering why Emirates able to overtake SIA so shortly a time in premium air travel. The Iran trip to attend a world Convention gave us the perfect opportunity to try out Emirates, which is not the cheapest airline to fly, compared to Turkish Airlines and Qatar Air.

The winning formula below which SIA should watch out for: 
1)  The win win collaboration between Quantas, the safest Airline in the world with no air accident to date, and Emirates.   You could fly from Brisbane to London direct, transitting through Singapore, Dubai and Tehran, then straight to London, a 22 hrs journey.
2)  Ease of booking seats on Emirates Website. You could choose the good seats during booking with a $30 extra fee.
3)  Emirates really know how to please their customers, we booked 3 months ahead, and some days before we fly, they emailed us to offer business class seats in exchange for our economy seats, paying only S$220 more from Singapore to Tehran, a journey about 12 hours with transit time. We grabbed the chance, then 2 days  before departure, they emailed us to offer S$211 more for the return journey back to Singapore, again we grabbed the seats, with seats that reclined to 45 degrees to have a good overnight sleep. Before disembarking whether at transit at Dubai or arrival at Tehran, the air stewards formed 2 lines and greeted all  First and Business Class passengers, making you feel like Royalty.
4) The food  was good, and you could have wines if you like.

I have attended annual SIA shareholders' meeting. I can see the Chairman and Board of Directors are far too old and not savvy to handle international competition from newcomers Middle eastern airlines, very difficult to teach old  dogs new tricks.

Upon my return,  I decided to sell off our SIA share holdings. Just like SPH, the GLCs are slowly losing the competition.  There is no new blood from the commercial sector to head them.

SIA should watch out for before Temasek would sell out our National Airline like NOL.

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