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leader in the industry. So as early productivity within the organization. We are at 92% of pre COVID
as March of 2020, that’s still during All that was part of the transfor- capacity but there a number of fac-
the early part of the pandemic we mation. The combination of all that tors slowing capacity. As you know
were communicating the message. was in the record profits, but also there is the aircraft capacity issue
We had communicated repeatedly the recognition that we continue to with some aircraft supposed to be
since then about us needing to be be recognized as the best airline. delivered and have been delayed
first off the block and therefore what We were recognized as one of the because of manufacturing and
we need to do in order to make sure top 50 most admired company by supply chain issues. Also the open-
that we are operationally ready and Fortune magazines. And that is ing of China, is relatively recent so
we launch the new world. ranked by executive in other com- that market will take a little time to
panies across all many industries. fully recover.
While there were not much flying And at the same time, we were
activities, we continued to upskill, also ranked as the most attractive Q Are you finding greater demand
re-skill our staff, we continued to employer in Singapore. We appre- for the premium cabin premium
keep the operating crew or pilots ciate those accolades but more economy business and first post
as well as cabin crew active. There importantly it recognizes our vision COVID?
may not be a lot of flying as a to want to emerge as the leader and
whole, but we rotate them so that not merely one that performed well We’re actually seeing a strong
most of them are able to still keep financially. demand across all cabins and that’s
their currency and all that. We the reason why we’re able to reach
continue to rotate aircraft to take all Q What about Marco trends – cost this unprecedented load factor of
clients even though each aircraft of living, travel demand? 92 8%. It’s not merely the premium
utilization is lower, but all of them cabin, but all cabins.
are kept operationally ready to add I would say that for the rest of the
capacity. So, with that, we were financial year and our financial end Q How is your relationship with
able indeed to actually put back in March, we feel that the demand Tata in India?
capacity just about almost always is still quite robust and we are
the first to put back capacity when- seeing strong demand across all We currently have 49% of a joint
ever border is open because we are the cabins. But there are certainly venture airline in India, a joint ven-
reading and we can make a deci- challenges for aviation, inflation ture with Tata with 51% of Vistara.
sion at very short notice. is one of them. Global macroeco- The reason why we had that joint
venture was because firstly our
nomic uncertainty, some of the
Q You had a transformation geopolitical tensions that we’ve strong belief in India as a market.
programme. been seeing that are intensifying. Tata has now acquired Air India.
When Tata was doing due diligence
So, all these are factors that would on the acquisition of Air India, we
Yes, we put a transformation pro- affect the demand for aviation for were appointed as the advisor. The
gramme in place which had more airlines, but these are not really fac- process of integrating Vistara into
than a hundred initiatives at one tors or challenges that we have not Air India is progressing. In fact, it
point to enhance our ability to better seen before in aviation industry. now has the blessing of the com-
serve customers, to look at new petition commission of India. There
revenue management systems, Q How is SIA’s capacity compared are a few other regulatory approv-
to enhance revenue management to 2019? When, in your opinion, als that have to be made, but we
capabilities and also to enhance will it fully recover? believe it’s on track. When that is
completed, we will own 25.1% of
the combined entity, which really
comprise Air India, Express Asia
India and Vistara. We started with
that joint venture because there is
actually a lot of synergy that can
be established between India and
Singapore. And even with Vistara
we were working on commercial
collaborations and those collabo-
rations will continue with Air India
once this entire approval process
has been completed..

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