Singapore Airlines CEO Lays Out Challenges Without Any Domestic Routes
Photo Credit: Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong speaking with Skift Airline Weekly Editor Madhu Unnikrishnan at Skift Forum Asia on May 27, 2019. Skift / Richard Lai
Skift Take
In a rare appearance at Skift Forum Asia, Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong says the carrier is in a unique position: It doesn't operate a single domestic route. So it has to make up for the valuable revenue stream it lacks from domestic traffic feed by competing aggressively in a fragmented market.
Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong said he envies American Airlines CEO Doug Parker for the scale and potential for profitability that U.S. carriers have from a large domestic market. Parker, the chief of the U.S.'s largest carrier, once famously said the era of airlines reporting losses is over.
In its most recent quarter, Singapore Airlines reported profit margins lower than analysts expected and lower than the company had previously reported. Much of this is explained by the region in which Singapore operates. Unlike Parker, Goh said his company has no domestic market to provide a valuable feed of passengers to its long-haul routes.
Additionally, the landscape has changed in the last 10 years, as Persian Gulf carriers have aggressively added routes througho
