Routes Reconnected: Airlines with 'dare and imagination' will recover stronger in Asia

Those airlines with the “dare and imagination” to rethink their products and strategy will emerge stronger from the pandemic crisis, a senior figure at Singapore Airlines has said.

Philip Goh, VP for Southwest Pacific at the flag-carrier, said airlines with the “means to do more” and the courage to innovate will succeed, both in low-cost and full-service segments.

“If you're prepared to challenge the status quo, if you're prepared to look beyond the short-term and work towards your ambitions, particularly on the sustainability point of view, and bring your unit costs down, you can identify a lot of opportunities,” Goh said. “This is the perfect time to revisit some of those things.”

Goh, who was speaking at a Routes Reconnected 2020 panel session on the future of the Asia-Pacific market, also predicted the region would be the first to recover from the COVID-19 crisis. However, it faces a “long and winding road” back to recovery, he said.

Fellow panelist Lyell Strambi, the CEO of Melbourne Airport (MEL), also spoke of the need to “reimagine the business.”

“One of the great things a crisis like this will do is knock down those barriers to change; those preconceived notions of how things must work,” Strambi said. “You're prepared to take a little bit more risk and seize the moment of low activity levels to experiment with some new things.”