After North America and Europe, in Asia too airlines are working to regain their level of activity as quickly as possible before the onset of Covid-19. For now, the return to better fortune is in disorganized order. Singapore Airlines is one of the very first to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Between October and December 2021, in the third quarter of its fiscal year which ended at the end of March, but whose results will not be published until May, the Singapore company again generated profits. “These are our first profits since the crisis”, welcomes Siva Govindasamy, vice president of public affairs at Singapore Airlines. The company can be happy about this, because the pandemic has not spared it. In its previous financial year, it lost nearly 3 billion euros. A shock for Singapore Airlines which “ before the crisis, had never lost money and had always been profitable over a year since its creation in 1947″, says Mr. Govindasamy again.
The company is not the only one to have plunged into the red due to the Covid. The Malaysian AirAsia, its regional rival, has accumulated a debt of 8 billion dollars (7.4 billion euros) during this period, due in particular to the difficulties of AirAsia X, its long-haul low-cost subsidiary almost the stoppage for two years. To relieve some of its financial pressure, AirAsia has canceled an order for 73 Airbuses, including 63 medium-haul A320neo and 10 copies of the all-new A321 MLR.
Unlike China, Singapore has turned its back on the zero Covid policy and opened its doors wide again to travelers since 1is avril
Cathay Pacific isn’t the best either. The Hong Kong company has certainly reduced its losses, set at $703 million in 2021 after peaking at $2.76 billion in 2020, but it is still in the red. In Asia, many executives of competing companies consider that Cathay Pacific is not helped by the Chinese authorities. The strict quarantine long imposed on passengers and crew arriving in Hong Kong thus prevented the company from taking advantage of the windfall of air freight at the height of the epidemic. A way for Beijing, it is said, to accompany the bringing to heel of “Hong Kong the rebel”, by harassing the activity of his company.
This, for the greater benefit of the three largest Chinese companies Air China, China Eastern and China Southern. They really need it. The pandemic is weighing on their finances. In 2021 alone, their losses reached $5 billion. And the failure of the zero Covid strategy put in place by China, which has to face an upsurge in the pandemic with the confinement of large cities such as Shanghai, should have a lasting effect on the activity of companies in the Middle Kingdom.
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