In the plethora of ongoing COVID-19 related or caused significant changes in aviation, big brother Singapore Airlines is swallowing its little brother SilkAir and Cathay Pacific is swallowing the Dragon!
Singapore Airlines says that SilkAir’s regional narrow-body operations will be merged into Singapore Airlines, with in a massive change for Singapore Airlines, the first of SilkAir’s SQ 737-800‘s entering service with Singapore Airlines in 2021.
Singapore Airlines recently announced a very significant six month SG$3.467 billion loss, which included large non-cash write-downs of SG$1.3 billion in older generation aircraft, including seven A380s, eight 777s, nine A320s and two A319s, the SG$127 million charge from the liquidation of failed Thailand-based airline NokScoot and the full SG$170million write down of its Tiger Airways low-cost operation. With passenger traffic down 98.9% and group revenue declining over 80%, substantial changes had been anticipated.
Over at Cathay Pacific, a major restructuring was also announced recently, with 8,500 jobs, 24% of the workforce going, with the airline reportedly losing $HKD1.5 to $HKD2 billion monthly with the objective of the restructuring to reduce losses by a still very substantial around $HKD500 million HKD per month.
Cathay Pacific also recently announced the immediate termination of Cathay Dragon operations, with regulatory approval being sought to transfer most of Cathay Dragon’s routes to Cathay Pacific, take over Cathay Dragon’s A321neos, and HK Express, Cathay Pacific’s low cost carrier.
A report by John Alwyn-Jones
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