How Singapore Airlines beat the coronavirus pandemic and came out ahead

Singapore Airlines raised US$10.9 billion from shareholders through the sales of shares and convertible bonds to stay afloat during the pandemic

The carrier still faces headwinds from the tail of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, and will only be back to 2.3 of its pre-Covid capacity by September

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Published: 11:53am, 3 Jun 2022Updated: 2:41am, 4 Jun 2022

The day after Wuhan went into a lockdown in January 2020, Singapore Airlines’ 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?

Within weeks, as China locked down more cities to try to stop the novel coronavirus spreading and nations began to shut their borders, a chilling reality emerged.

Goh and other executives realised that if they did not take drastic action fast, the airline that Singapore spent seven decades building into one of the world’s largest and most respected international carriers could go out of business. “At that point, absolutely we were serious about it,” Goh said in an interview on Tuesday. The company could not take for granted that it would be bailed out, he said.

What emerged over those tense weeks of meetings, while airlines around the world filed for bankruptcy or sought state help to stay alive, was a new strategy at Singapore’s flag-carrier – one that not only allowed the airline to weather the pandemic, but would set it up to capitalise on the weakened state of its competitors once travel began to rebound.

“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.”

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Grounded plane serves as restaurant to help Singapore Airlines stay aloft during Covid-19 pandemic

Consistently voted one of the world’s top three airlines for the past decade, the company could only wait for the pandemic to run its course. Unlike rivals such as Qantas Airways in Australia, or Delta Air Lines in the US, Singapore Airlines has no domestic market.