How Singapore Airlines beat the pandemic and came out ahead

The day after Wuhan went into a lockdown in January 2020, Singapore Airlines CEO 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 realized that if they didn’t 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 capitalize 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.” Story has more.<br/>