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Aviation History
1984
1984 - 0058.PDF
SIA: airline with an image The homeward-bound Singapore Airlines Boing 747 rolls gently forward on to Bombay Airport's runway, and turns left momentarily before swinging right to line-up for take-off. Capt Liok Yew Teck gains only about ten metres of usable tarmac by carrying out this jink in his line-up procedure. But he does it, where many 747 pilots would not have bothered. About two days later Chris Lee, SIA's director of cabin crew, was explaining to Flight that it is the little things which make all the difference. Chairman J. Pillay explains his atti tude to the current position of this airline, which has never made a loss. "We envis age no lifting of cost pressures. Unless our organisation can respond by sustained improvements in productivity, we shall go the way of many older airlines and be priced out of the market". The chairman is annoyed by suggestions that SIA's commercial success is not real, that the airline enjoys subsidy from the Singapore Government. "If anybody suspects that we get hidden subsidies—which reveals ignorance of the way the Singapore Government, our major shareholder, operates, then please come [to examine the books]; and if he can find any subsidy, I'd like the world to know; and if he cannot, maybe he can give us Singapore Airlines has an image and reputation which is envied by many other carriers. Does it deserve them? David Learmount investigates some clues as to how we get subsidies from our Government". Managing director George Chan says that SIA finances all its new aircraft, and the extensive new engineering building at Changi, from internally-generated funds. The nearest the Government has come to involvement is to be a guarantor for some of the US Eximbank and other loans for new aircraft. The airline paid S$10-7 million in dividends to shareholders for the year 1982/83, and the Government gets nearly 90 per cent of that. At the end of the last financial year the company's d«bt-equity ratio stood at 0-81, against 0 • 93 for the previous year. Chan, questioned on the subject of SIA's loudly-stated commitment to totally free worldwide trade, says that if a third world nation (for example) cannot set up its own airline without setting up protec tionism to save it, then it should not set up an airline at all. These, he says, are the terms of reference under which SIA was set up and under which it operates. Pillay is fervently in favour of deregu lation and natural market forces for the airline business. Really Singapore has to push for dereg ulation, because its island population of about 2i million could not possibly support an airline fleet of 29 aircraft. Obviously its routes are international only, so SIA must attract international traffic other than pure Singapore origin- and-destination passengers. The island is well-placed at an international travel crossroads, and it works hard to take full advantage of that point, of its multi-ethnic population, and to present an image which will attract any traveller passing that way. SIA's image is that which the island itself likes to project. Behind the well- promoted charm and beauty there must be efficiency, technical dexterity, and clean liness. SIA does not mention the subject at all, presumably for fear of offending near neighbours, but Indonesia levies a tax on all of its citizens leaving the country. Tourists pay anyway, to encourage them to spend their money at home, but busi nessmen can avoid the exit tax by flying Garuda. The Philippines operates a simi lar system. 78 FLIGHT International, 14 January 1984
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