Business travellers used to criss-crossing Asia will be delighted. Between now and 2020, Singapore Airlines (SIA) will be reorganising its services in South-East Asia, streamlining them by increasing the range of its regional routes and by the disappearance of its Silk Air subsidiary. Currently, with its fleet of 33 Airbus A320 and Boeing 737-800 aircraft, this airline serves some fifty destinations - including China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam - and offers a full-service product, but simplified with an economy and a business class. In other words, a product well below that offered by Singapore Airlines on its regional routes and, ultimately, barely better than that of the low-cost airlines.
Hence the need for a major shake-up. Singapore Airlines is therefore going to upgrade its product on regional routes. The airline has already started on routes served by Boeing 787 Dreamliners, offering a couchette seat in business class. SIA now offers three classes of service on the Singapore-Bangkok and Singapore-Hanoi routes, with the same quality of service as on long-haul routes. It has just announced that it will spend nearly 75 million dollars between now and 2020 to install lie-flat seats on Silk Air aircraft as well as individual video in both business and economy classes. The carrier explains this development as " the need to offer a consistent product and service across Singapore Airlines' full-service network ".
Once this upgrade is complete, there will be no justification for maintaining the Silk Air brand. From next year, SIA will begin to transfer certain Silk Air routes to its own network. This should make it easier for travellers to transfer with a single airline code. In addition, some Silk Air routes with low unit revenue per passenger could be transferred to Scoot, SIA's low-cost subsidiary.
According to Goh Choon Phong, CEO of Singapore Airlines, " the change will be positive for our customers. This is another example of the significant investment we are making to ensure that our product and services continue to be the best, whether on long-, medium- or short-haul routes. ".
