How Singapore Airlines beat the pandemic and came out ahead

—The day after Wuhan went into a lockdown in January 2020, Singapore Airlines Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Goh Choon Phong called a crisis meeting at Airline House, the company’s massive, factory-like headquarters at the end of Changi Airport’s runways. The question to be answered: How bad is this going to be?

“The virus was spreading across the world and borders were closing one after another,” Goh said. “So the first priority obviously is to make sure that we have enough funding to outlast this crisis.”for the past decade, the company could only wait for the pandemic to run its course. Unlike rivals such as Qantas Airways Ltd. in Australia, or Delta Air Lines Inc. in the US, Singapore Airlines has no domestic market. By April 2020, it was operating at just 3% of pre-Covid capacity.

“We have never had a need to reach out to so many different sources of funding,” Singapore Airlines’ Goh said during a briefing in May. “We learned a lot about how best to actually organise the process of getting those fundings.” The airline also needs to partly unwind a hefty cost-cutting program that it undertook during the pandemic. The company won agreements with Airbus SE and Boeing Co. to defer aircraft deliveries and re-negotiated contracts with other suppliers. Pay cuts were rolled out across the company. Some staff took early retirement, while flight crews were temporarily allowed to take jobs in hospitals and transportation companies.

“Most airlines in the region are either skint or structurally damaged by Covid,” said Shukor Yusof, founder of aviation consultant Endau Analytic. “Post-pandemic, this is the airline of choice for many who want to travel” to Southeast Asia.

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