Jeremy’s World: Singapore Airlines is ATW’s best in the world, but what about SATS?
Reports from Singapore are rejoicing for Singapore Airlines (SIA) — named Airline of the Year at the 49th Annual Air Transport World (ATW) Airline Industry Achievement Awards last week.
“World’s Best Airline” is always a fairly ambiguous title as it seems to depend on who you are asking. In SIA’s case, it was Air Transport World. Skytrax, however, had a different view recently. It named Qatar Airways as the “World’s Best” last September. So, can one pick and choose?
ATW’s recognition honoured SIA’s swift and decisive response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which enabled it to re-enter the market strongly when borders reopened. The airline raised $22.4 billion in fresh liquidity — the most by any airline during the pandemic — largely courtesy of Temasek Holdings, a state-holding company owned by the Government of Singapore, which put $19 billion Singapore Dollars into the airline as early as 2020.
There is no doubt that SIA has seen its passenger load factor soar as it quickly restored passenger capacity to capture the pent-up demand in the second half of 2022. In December 2022, the group had its highest passenger load factor in its history, at 89.7 percent. In January 2023, its passenger load factor was 85.9 percent.
However, despite record profits, the airline's caterer SATS is seeing the need to cut back on its onboard service offering. SATS announced this week that, for many airlines, it is swapping out prawns for chicken. SATS also revealed its third-quarter income shrank to S$0.5 million (US$375,000) from S$5.1 million a year earlier. All in all, the results were an improvement from Q2, when the company posted a S$9.9 million loss.
Is this a case of the caterer bearing the brunt of the airline’s recovery plans?
