How Singapore Airlines Beat the Pandemic and Came Out Ahead
- Carrier went from brink of catastrophe to regional dominance
- Airline survived by persuading investors to put up $16 billion
Unlike rivals such as Qantas in Australia, or Delta in the US, Singapore Airlines has no domestic market.
Photographer: Ore Huiying/BloombergThe day after Wuhan went into a lockdown in January 2020, Singapore Airlines Ltd. 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 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.