SIA: Declining yield per pax
 

This is a known news and been discussed that ME3 have impacted not just North American but other carriers too, including SQ.

However, the fact that the below article appeared in local media and its language, intuition tells me the next move to cut costs will be justified based on this news below.

Thread open to discuss potential cost/ service cuts, including the possibility of an olive cut from meals.

Bloomberg article



My thoughts:
- Minor ramp down in meals (quality/quantity)
- Devaluation in award chart
- Unlikely they will discount heavily

Well maybe SIA should start opening up their premium cabins to other Star Alliance FF programs to fill some seats. Some revenue is better than none!

They have already done so to a certain extent, in Y, at least. There have been fares for $250 SIN-HKG, and $6xx SIN-AU east coast. A few years ago, you wouldn't even dream of such prices from SQ.

The $250 fares are likely to price match CX...

Wonder what is happening on the other side of the ledger? Whilst yield may be down, surely so are costs with the lower fuel price. Or are hedges still making it difficult on the cost side as well?

And I heard cabin crew salaries are coming down as well :eek:

Don't see why anyone is surprised by this. There's a younger generation in Singapore who happily choose to fly the ME3 and LCC's over SQ.

That leaves SQ reliant on a pool of loyal customers who are willing to pay a lot more for slightly better quality - 1) corporate expense customers and 2) older Singaporeans who will not travel on any other airline. The former is static and the latter is shrinking.

What SQ can do about it is more difficult. It's hard to fight demographics. They need new ideas, but history suggests this is very unlikely. Not surprising as the formula of Singapore Girl + modern fleet has worked for the last 40 years.

Not surprised, if they plan to charge, literally, 3-4x more in J, from Asia to Europe/North America/Pacific, compared to other similar (sometimes better) carriers. Sad to see the cuts, as I loved the SQ Suites offering. However, can't see myself spending that much on SQ, if I can get EY F Apartments for way less.

I don't know if it's necessarily a generational thing, the fact is a generation ago ... even just 13-14 years ago ... Etihad and Jetstar (and of course Tiger & Scoot) did not exist and QR, EK and Air Asia were relatively minor players.

SQ has actually done OK with the onslaught - look at the basket cases that are TG & MH, and whilst CX seems to do very well, it has a natural geographic advantage bring traffic from North America to SE Asia and southern China and of course does not face the ME3 across the Pacific.

One wonders though eventually it may have to do a deal ala QF/EK with EY or QR. Then again hell might freeze over.

You have a point about this being driven as much by the rise of competition, but I maintain that demographics is also a factor. 40-somethings are still much less likely to switch from SQ than 20-somethings.

You must be having a laugh. Have you seen some of the things the QR CEO has said about SQ? There'll definitely be some freezing before that ever happens.

He is known to be outspoken.. QR sleeping in bed with SQ will be out of convenience - and may be profitable in Long run. QR has good access to Europe and westwards which SQ can benefit from.

But QR is OW, and one would think that will cause a serious kerfuffle.

This is all nonsense. It would never happen. Period.

Yes I was having a bit of a laugh. Well at least with respect to QR. EY on the other hand you never know, if the yields keep falling for SQ .... EY have a different strategy to QR and EK, although granted their growth mechanism is also via equity rather than just flying big planes everywhere or alliances without equity.