It’s been a fascinating day, as an outside observer of the impasse between Singapore Airlines and Flight Center – one of Australia’s largest and most powerful travel agents (they’re actually much more than just an agent).
The Contradictions – SIA vs Flight Center
Late last night, SIA sent out an email to its Australian frequent fliers, which announced that the airline’s tickets will no longer be sold through Flight Center. That came as a shock, since it’s like saying your website won’t appear on Google.

But things got more interesting, when Flight Center put out a release countering what Singapore Airlines had said, claiming that they’re still selling SIA tickets, but it’s just not the preferred airline. What that means is if you want to fly from Sydney to London, Flight Center would recommend Emirates, Qantas or another airline, unless you insist on flying Singapore Airlines. And that can still mean a lot of business loss.

No lessons learnt from the Indian fiasco?
SIA flight attendants on flights to India used to be tired by the end of the …

Singapore Airlines has created probably the most well recognized airline brand in the world. The Singapore Girl has done great wonders for the airline and the nation over the years. Even ardent competitors like the CEO of AirAsia, Tony Fernandes, openly claim to be learning from the airline.

But the recent tough times have hit the airline hard, just like other premium carriers like Cathay Pacific. Singapore Airlines has decided to cut over 200 flights and is experiencing low load-factors in its premium classes – where it makes most of its money. So the big looming question is what should the airline do now? Change strategy? Probably not. How about using social media to soften the impact, by engaging the customers and employees real-time? Why not?
You can run, but you can’t hide
In my conversations with folks over at Singapore Airlines (quite a few of them!), I’ve sensed educated-nonchalance when it comes to adopting social media to pursue its business goals in this downturn. Not only are they hardly present on social media outlets, the airline seems unconvinced about the importance of a two-way conversation. SIA doesn’t have a blog, Twitter account, Facebook page or even social-media-friendly press releases (I …

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You can win an autographed copy of a book on Singapore Airlines or a 4GB iPod by Tweeting any quote from this article or writing a comment here. Find out more here.
Remember the story about food on Virgin Atlantic?

Earlier this year, I had published an article on how Virgin Atlantic had dealt with a passenger whose grievances about bad food had made it to The Telegraph, as the “world’s best complaint letter”. Sir Richard Branson had personally called him up and requested him to help choose the menu for future flights. Virgin Atlantic had successfully turned a critic into a fan.

Generally, this is an exception in the airline industry, as complaints often fall on deaf ears. But as I discovered, at Singapore Airlines, it is a practice to take special care of a disgruntled passenger, ensuring that he is a convert by the end of the brand engagement. The first time I heard this, I was wondering how this was possible. That’s when I was enlightened by an experienced SIA crew member.
The downside of an unhappy passenger
On every flight there are bound to be passengers who feel that they have been shortchanged, mishandled or …

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You can win an autographed copy of this book or a 4gb iPod by Tweeting any quote from this article or writing a comment here. Find out more here.
I’ve been monitoring conversations about Singapore Airlines (SIA) on Twitter for the last couple of weeks. And unlike most tweets about airlines, a large majority of tweets are positive! Here’re two of them:
@thetravelingCMO, Mon 04 May 14:39: Singapore Airlines in coach is like any US carrier’s Business. Well, to be fair, the service is probably better on SQ!
@MikeyFletch, Fri 01 May 18:27: Wow, Singapore airlines is a bit posh, time to fly
How has Singapore Airlines been so successful and well-admired for such a long time? There’s always a an enigma of sorts when it comes to this question. But this latest book by Jochen Writz, Loizos Heracleous and Nitin Pangarkar attempts to answer this very question – and does a pretty respectable job of doing so too!
Discovering the secrets of SIA’s success
The book begins by an overview of the challenges faced in the airline industry and goes on to provide an overview of SIA’s overall strategy. But …

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Announcing, SimpliFlying’s first Tweepitition!
Tweepitition n. |tweep-iti-tion| – A competition for people on Twitter (Tweeple) where they can win great prizes like a 4GB Apple iPod shuffle (the one that talks!) and five autographed copies of the outstanding book on Singapore Airlines, “Flying High in a Competitive Industry: Secrets of the World’s Leading Airline”.
Why this competition? Why now?
SimpliFlying has been publishing three articles on airline branding per week for 15 months now. And we’ve been showered with a lot of love. Almost 180 articles have been read over 65,000 times! Sometime in the next two weeks, SimpliFlying will be re-launched with a fresh, new look that will offer a much better user experience.
Let’s just say that we’re re-branding this Summer and wanted to thank our avid readers with something relevant (the book on SIA!) and hip (what’s more hip than an iPod that talks?).
Prizes: Each of the five books will be given away through a lucky draw of people who’ve completed either of the two tasks below. Draws will be …

Continuing with the ancillary revenues special this March, I’d like to explore the issue whether ancillary revenues are good for the airline brand, or detrimental. We all know they’re good for the balance sheet, but what about the brand? To answer this question, let me segment ancillary revenues in two bands – charging for value addition, and un-bundling current product and services.
Charging the passenger for value-addition
A comment on the hotly debated article I wrote on RyanAir’s competition for charging passengers got me thinking. Here’s what Shyrose had to say:
“RyanAir should link up with the local taxi companies of the detination airports and agree a deal with them, whereby flyers can book their taxi on the plane so it’s ready and waiting for them the other side. Taxi companies give Ryannair a referral fee, and Ryanair will be positioned as offering greater value service for customers.”
And I think Shyrose is bang-on-target. Customers don’t mind paying for additional services they value. And this is especially true when the offer is in-sync with the brand expectation. There are ample examples of such value addition. Travel insurance and car rental are popular ones. The intelligent …

I flew to from Delhi to Singapore yesterday on Singapore Airlines. Service was at its best, as always, but the Boeing 777 plane wasn’t very full. In fact, the load factor was startingly low – probably below 50%! There was one person in First Class, less than five in Business Class and Economy was empty enough that almost everyone had the middle row seats to sleep across. And it seems to be the case across Singapore Airlines’ flights from India. Why would they be suddenly cutting 214 regional flights?

What’s wrong? Recession… nah, but surely something else is at play here too.
End of the peak season?
Airline officials argued in a recent news report that the drop was due to the end of the peak winter season. “The fall happens every season from January to August,” said an official. But I’d disagree that the slump can be so severe. It’s the end of the peak season, not the beginning of the low season! So, how can passenger numbers drop from 300+ per flight to just over 100?
The unspoken truth: travel agents’ boycott
The drop in traffic in India …

Gone are the days when we received some unknown meat topped with a squishy brown liquid and neon green vegetables on board airlines. These days, either we don’t receive anything for free ($2 for water anyone? Think US Airways ), or we receive peanuts (think Southwest) or are over-fed (think Qatar Airways). But which airlines serve the best food?

[caption id="attachment_776" align="alignright" width="373" caption="Food on Singapore Airlines - pretty good, but not the best"][/caption]

This article is inspired from a review SimpliFlying has received, which notes that there is hardly any talk about food quality on board airlines on this blog. Indeed, food quality and serivce forms an integral part of the flight experience – especially for long haul flights. In fact, it can sometimes be crucial to winning the customers hearts, as Malaysia Airlines CEO realized. They had been serving mutton biryani on routes to China, and customers didn’t like it. They switched to chicken rice, and won their hearts. At the same time, they started offering mutton biryani on flights to Delhi, which was well received too.

Personally, …

Canadian playwright Raymond Hull is famously quoted as saying that “he who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.” Laura Reis has aptly applied this concept to airline branding, and concluded that airlines need to “do one thing and do it well” to build lasting brands.

Laura Ries is a world renowned branding guru and is the president of Ries & Ries, an Atlanta-based marketing strategy firm that she runs with her father Al Ries – the person who coined the term “positioning”. Together they have consulted with many Fortune 500 companies, including leading airlines. Hence, it is an honor to feature her exclusive interview on airline branding at SimpliFlying.
The power of focus
In this Part 1 of 2 interviews, Laura and I discuss the importance of laser-sharp focus for airlines. She shares the example of American Airlines – whose latest campaign is “we know why you fly”. “Who doesn’t know why a person flies!”, Laura exclaims. American Airlines is a textbook example of unfocused and diluted branding, where a company is trying hard to please everyone, and in the end achieving little.

On …

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="306" caption="Image by caribb via Flickr"][/caption]

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Innovative products and services – the key ingredient for strong brands – ooze out all the chart-toppers in Conde Nast Traveler 2008 airline rankings released recently. Last week, in an interview with this blog, Gary Leopold, the CEO of ISM Boston shared that “the product is the brand”. This certainly holds true for for the top few airlines in each category. Below, we’ve pointed out what the top two airlines in each category do right, that makes them so good.
Surprise! in the air
Before we get into what the to airlines do right, how about pointing out some surprises about this latest ranking? Interestingly, Singapore Airlines operates only one trans-Atlantic flight (Frankfurt – JFK), and yet they are in the top two airlines on this route. Even though they don’t use their latest and best planes on this route, the great brand leverage they’ve built for themselves continues to give them lots of mileage on this route.
Where are the US airlines? Bad product + Bad service = bad brand!
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The US airlines are …