Singapore Airlines has announced an increase in its London flights from 3 daily A380s to 4 by adding a 777-300ER service to its tally.
On the face of it this just brings SQ up to the same total as the combined BA/Qantas codeshared joint service operation. (The two share management, staff and facilities in Singapore and Bangkok).
The reality though is different.
Singapore Airlines and most other Oriental carriers have long seen life very clearly. They identify their challenges, design how best to deal with them and then go for it. Right now their competition comes from the rising Middle East carriers, including Turkish, with large shiny new fleets, ever multiplying spokes and frequencies from their conveniently located home hubs and bold approach to investment. The Orientals are less worried by the much less aggressive and focused European carriers who have much less market dominating thrust . Dealing with the Middle Eastern threat has to be top of their priorities .In the new world governments are not going to step in to protect their home carriers. There is far too much for countries to lose economically for them to do that. SQ and other Far East based airlines can't economically add as many nonstop spokes into European provincial points as the Middle Easterns can . The distances are too great. Possibly the relatively small size and economics of the 787 will change that,- but that's not yet proven. For now the airlines have to rack up the capacity and frequency to the major cities which they can serve well. The next necessity is to spread these throughout the day. Traditionally right back to the 1960s ,overnight flights between Asia and Europe have sold better than daylights. As result although airlines have since the earliest jets tended to dabble occasionally with the daylight flights westbound and early departures eastbound (giving morning rather than late afternoon arrivals) most stuck to the tried and tested formula of late nights westbound and afternoon through to late night departures eastbound. When they have tried breaking away from this pattern they have very quickly abandoned the experiment in the face accountants scowls at lower margins or initial losses. They simply lost their nerve and didn't stick with the daylights long enough to get them established and make them work. Lufthansa in Hong Kong was an exception as were Finnair and SAS in other Asian cities.
In recent years the picture has begun to change and give passengers between Asia and Europe a better choice. Business travellers in particular have welcomed the greater flexibility to change plans and avoid wasting time if their meetings ended earlier than expected or something urgent cropped up back home. Getting on a plane quickly was better than kicking their heels in a hotel waiting for dark.
The change has been down to three main factors:
-Better aircraft utilisation of aircraft by avoiding the day long layovers at the European end.
-Slot availabity in Europe, particularly Heathrow.
-Genuine desire to gain market share by offering more choice.
-To counter the high quality Middle East based 6th Freedom carriers offering multiple departures in each direction, albeit via an intermediate change of flight.
Singapore, Cathay Pacific,Malaysia and Thai have all taken the frequency and choice approach. Cathay are now up to 4 daily well spaced London flights while Malaysia and Thai with two each offer midday and late evening departures westbound and overnight and daylight eastbound.
The BA/Qantas approach on the Singapore,Bangkok and Hong Kong routes is entirely different. It is traditional/conservative. The only exception has been this summer's short term toe- in- the- water thrice weekly 777 Hong Kong services .These are not shared with Qantas who have withdrawn from Hong Kong-London as well as Bangkok-London. (Back home Australians are beginning to get vociferous about what they see as a national icon of a brand in retreat).The BA/Qantas combine have stuck with the overnight formula avoiding a wide spread of eastbound timings and clumping all westbounds to within a very short late night timeframe. From the passengers' point of view these simply merge together into one very high capacity flight offering around 1,400 seats.
As result of these different philosophies the competing products this summer before Singapore Airlines introduce their 4th service in October look like:
SINGAPORE AND LONDON ROUTE:
SQ: Eastbound : 1130/1830/2205. Longest gap 11hrs 25 m.
Westbound : 0905/1245/2230. Longest gap 10hrs 35 m.
BA/QF: Eastbound : 2025/2115/2130/2230. Gap: 21hrs 55 m.
Westbound : 2255/2305/2325/2357. Gap: 22hrs 56 m.
Notes: BA/QF Eastbound services all operate within a 2 hrs 5 mins band.
Westbound services all operate within a 1hr 1 min band.
Singapore Airlines' additional service from October will depart at 0045 westbound and 1515 eastbound.
BANGKOK AND LONDON ROUTE:
Thai: Eastbound: 1230/2130. Gap 14hrs 30 m.
Westbound: 1225/0025. Gap 12 hrs.
BA/QF: Eastbound : 2205 only Gap 24 hrs.
Westbound: 0025 only Gap 24 hrs
KUALA LUMPUR AND LONDON ROUTE:
Malaysia: Eastbound: 1200/2200 Gap 14 hrs.
Westbound: 1005/2340 Gap 13hrs 35 m.
BA/QF No service since 1998.
HONG KONG AND LONDON ROUTE:
Cathay : Eastbound:
Westbound: 0035/1005/1440/2355
BA: Eastbound: *1200/1830/2200 Gap *14hrs or 20hrs 30m.
Westbound: * 0910/2315/2345 Gap *14hrs 50 or 23hrs 30m.
Note: *=3 x weekly Currently Summer 2012 only.
The differences in approach could not be clearer........
Asian v British/ European. Investment/ innovation/ schedule choice v sticking with the proven recipe.
The short term financial pressures are clearly to go with the latter up to the point where lines on a graph cross and then switch nimbly to the latter. Let other people try to generate an all-day market and watch and wait until you get to the point where aircraft utilisation savings cover any revenue gap.
Ultimately the longer term visionaries and innovators tend to benefit. For many years BA flew 3 Hong Kong flights a day, closely bunched westbound though with better spreads eastbound. Cathay had the same frequency but with a better spread in both directions. Cathay are now up to four and BA's core schedule is down to two. An added factor was BA reducing its Economy class configurations to boost premium capacity. This meant spilling high volume low yield business to Cathay who have used it as bedrock revenue with which to underpin their frequency increase and in doing so make themselves more attractive to the premium market. Who is winning?
European airlines (and those include Qantas in ethos despite its unique and robust differences) have in general been struggling on Oriental and Australasian routes. Their service , including catering (which indicates hospitality in eastern cultures) has been visibly thrifted and their crews have not been consistently good in their understanding of or attention to Oriental passengers. As result, coupled with the enormous investment in new and enlarged fleets by high quality eastern competitors originally in Asia and now in the Gulf , they have mostly been outplayed although their immediate revenue/costs/profit ratios have probably been better than had they come out fighting. Their planners tend to struggle with finance people who take hard nosed but narrow short term views about where the best margins are to be obtained with existing equipment and other resources. Talk about "Long term global strategy" and the westerners eyes tend to glaze over. Hence adding to existing successes,-eg long haul overnight services and London Heathrow ,- is almost always preferred over the speculative deployment of an aircraft to another route pattern, schedule or route. For example for BA another flight out of Heathrow will always win against one out of Manchester while Gatwick will always struggle to get the commitment and investment it has to have to thrive long term. Lufthansa decided several years ago to break out of that mindset and straitjacket and went for it in developing a second major hub in Munich. It's been expensive and they could have done better in the short term by sticking with just Frankfurt but in long term it will strengthen them. In fact they were thinking more like an Asian business.
Perhaps more western airlines should be asking themselves the question:"What would we do if we were Asian?" Come to think of it, some of their home country governments and other businesses would do well to ask the same thing.
On the face of it this just brings SQ up to the same total as the combined BA/Qantas codeshared joint service operation. (The two share management, staff and facilities in Singapore and Bangkok).
The reality though is different.
Singapore Airlines and most other Oriental carriers have long seen life very clearly. They identify their challenges, design how best to deal with them and then go for it. Right now their competition comes from the rising Middle East carriers, including Turkish, with large shiny new fleets, ever multiplying spokes and frequencies from their conveniently located home hubs and bold approach to investment. The Orientals are less worried by the much less aggressive and focused European carriers who have much less market dominating thrust . Dealing with the Middle Eastern threat has to be top of their priorities .In the new world governments are not going to step in to protect their home carriers. There is far too much for countries to lose economically for them to do that. SQ and other Far East based airlines can't economically add as many nonstop spokes into European provincial points as the Middle Easterns can . The distances are too great. Possibly the relatively small size and economics of the 787 will change that,- but that's not yet proven. For now the airlines have to rack up the capacity and frequency to the major cities which they can serve well. The next necessity is to spread these throughout the day. Traditionally right back to the 1960s ,overnight flights between Asia and Europe have sold better than daylights. As result although airlines have since the earliest jets tended to dabble occasionally with the daylight flights westbound and early departures eastbound (giving morning rather than late afternoon arrivals) most stuck to the tried and tested formula of late nights westbound and afternoon through to late night departures eastbound. When they have tried breaking away from this pattern they have very quickly abandoned the experiment in the face accountants scowls at lower margins or initial losses. They simply lost their nerve and didn't stick with the daylights long enough to get them established and make them work. Lufthansa in Hong Kong was an exception as were Finnair and SAS in other Asian cities.
In recent years the picture has begun to change and give passengers between Asia and Europe a better choice. Business travellers in particular have welcomed the greater flexibility to change plans and avoid wasting time if their meetings ended earlier than expected or something urgent cropped up back home. Getting on a plane quickly was better than kicking their heels in a hotel waiting for dark.
The change has been down to three main factors:
-Better aircraft utilisation of aircraft by avoiding the day long layovers at the European end.
-Slot availabity in Europe, particularly Heathrow.
-Genuine desire to gain market share by offering more choice.
-To counter the high quality Middle East based 6th Freedom carriers offering multiple departures in each direction, albeit via an intermediate change of flight.
Singapore, Cathay Pacific,Malaysia and Thai have all taken the frequency and choice approach. Cathay are now up to 4 daily well spaced London flights while Malaysia and Thai with two each offer midday and late evening departures westbound and overnight and daylight eastbound.
The BA/Qantas approach on the Singapore,Bangkok and Hong Kong routes is entirely different. It is traditional/conservative. The only exception has been this summer's short term toe- in- the- water thrice weekly 777 Hong Kong services .These are not shared with Qantas who have withdrawn from Hong Kong-London as well as Bangkok-London. (Back home Australians are beginning to get vociferous about what they see as a national icon of a brand in retreat).The BA/Qantas combine have stuck with the overnight formula avoiding a wide spread of eastbound timings and clumping all westbounds to within a very short late night timeframe. From the passengers' point of view these simply merge together into one very high capacity flight offering around 1,400 seats.
As result of these different philosophies the competing products this summer before Singapore Airlines introduce their 4th service in October look like:
SINGAPORE AND LONDON ROUTE:
SQ: Eastbound : 1130/1830/2205. Longest gap 11hrs 25 m.
Westbound : 0905/1245/2230. Longest gap 10hrs 35 m.
BA/QF: Eastbound : 2025/2115/2130/2230. Gap: 21hrs 55 m.
Westbound : 2255/2305/2325/2357. Gap: 22hrs 56 m.
Notes: BA/QF Eastbound services all operate within a 2 hrs 5 mins band.
Westbound services all operate within a 1hr 1 min band.
Singapore Airlines' additional service from October will depart at 0045 westbound and 1515 eastbound.
BANGKOK AND LONDON ROUTE:
Thai: Eastbound: 1230/2130. Gap 14hrs 30 m.
Westbound: 1225/0025. Gap 12 hrs.
BA/QF: Eastbound : 2205 only Gap 24 hrs.
Westbound: 0025 only Gap 24 hrs
KUALA LUMPUR AND LONDON ROUTE:
Malaysia: Eastbound: 1200/2200 Gap 14 hrs.
Westbound: 1005/2340 Gap 13hrs 35 m.
BA/QF No service since 1998.
HONG KONG AND LONDON ROUTE:
Cathay : Eastbound:
Westbound: 0035/1005/1440/2355
BA: Eastbound: *1200/1830/2200 Gap *14hrs or 20hrs 30m.
Westbound: * 0910/2315/2345 Gap *14hrs 50 or 23hrs 30m.
Note: *=3 x weekly Currently Summer 2012 only.
The differences in approach could not be clearer........
Asian v British/ European. Investment/ innovation/ schedule choice v sticking with the proven recipe.
The short term financial pressures are clearly to go with the latter up to the point where lines on a graph cross and then switch nimbly to the latter. Let other people try to generate an all-day market and watch and wait until you get to the point where aircraft utilisation savings cover any revenue gap.
Ultimately the longer term visionaries and innovators tend to benefit. For many years BA flew 3 Hong Kong flights a day, closely bunched westbound though with better spreads eastbound. Cathay had the same frequency but with a better spread in both directions. Cathay are now up to four and BA's core schedule is down to two. An added factor was BA reducing its Economy class configurations to boost premium capacity. This meant spilling high volume low yield business to Cathay who have used it as bedrock revenue with which to underpin their frequency increase and in doing so make themselves more attractive to the premium market. Who is winning?
European airlines (and those include Qantas in ethos despite its unique and robust differences) have in general been struggling on Oriental and Australasian routes. Their service , including catering (which indicates hospitality in eastern cultures) has been visibly thrifted and their crews have not been consistently good in their understanding of or attention to Oriental passengers. As result, coupled with the enormous investment in new and enlarged fleets by high quality eastern competitors originally in Asia and now in the Gulf , they have mostly been outplayed although their immediate revenue/costs/profit ratios have probably been better than had they come out fighting. Their planners tend to struggle with finance people who take hard nosed but narrow short term views about where the best margins are to be obtained with existing equipment and other resources. Talk about "Long term global strategy" and the westerners eyes tend to glaze over. Hence adding to existing successes,-eg long haul overnight services and London Heathrow ,- is almost always preferred over the speculative deployment of an aircraft to another route pattern, schedule or route. For example for BA another flight out of Heathrow will always win against one out of Manchester while Gatwick will always struggle to get the commitment and investment it has to have to thrive long term. Lufthansa decided several years ago to break out of that mindset and straitjacket and went for it in developing a second major hub in Munich. It's been expensive and they could have done better in the short term by sticking with just Frankfurt but in long term it will strengthen them. In fact they were thinking more like an Asian business.
Perhaps more western airlines should be asking themselves the question:"What would we do if we were Asian?" Come to think of it, some of their home country governments and other businesses would do well to ask the same thing.
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