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SINGAPORE — Wooing well-heeled passengers has never been more important for global airlines looking to offset high fuel costs, nor more difficult — even for pacesetters like Singapore Airlines.
Acknowledging the controversy surrounding a rare branding misstep, Singapore’s top executive said the company would review a new business class seat that sparked widespread internet and customer backlash. Originally commissioned for the carrier’s new flagship Boeing 777-9 aircraft and later extended to its long-haul Airbus A350 fleet, the bespoke Recaro-built seat is at the heart of a S$2 billion (US $1.56 billion) cabin overhaul that executives unveiled last week and plan to put in service later next year.
Unlike its aspiring U.S. counterparts, Singapore doesn’t have to constantly declare itself a premium airline. But the seat fallout has implications beyond its cabins, where the global carrier is — quite literally — an extension of the city-state and its national presentation to the world.
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The world’s top-ranked airline by Skytrax is defending its perch. It’s the latest to grapple with the burden of meeting high customer expectations while dealing with lengthy certification delays for aircraft seats and Boeing’s newest widebody jet, which is still in flight testing after 13 years of development. For Singapore Airlines, whose first of 31 777Xs were originally slated to be delivered in 2021, the repeated schedule slips mean that cabin products conceived last decade are only just coming to market.
“If you are the top of the game, you need to stay at the top of the game. It’s a super-important exercise,” said Martin Roll, a branding strategist and management consultant and long-time Singapore Air customer. “When the competition catches up from below, the leader goes up — not sideways to meet them.”
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