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Even as the postponement of the Singapore-Hong Kong air travel bubble has sapped some of the optimism around mass air travel, there is light on the horizon for low-cost carrier Scoot, its chief executive said.
With flights to just two cities, Hong Kong and Perth, in April and May, the airline now flies to 15 cities and hopes to add a couple more, as its passenger capacity will double early next year.
“I think we’ve been through the worst,” Campbell Wilson told the media yesterday at the launch of a new onboard portal.
“There is an upward trajectory and we are seeing some signs of improvement.”
The new portal is the latest in Scoot’s efforts to digitize and better meet customer expectations in a post-Covid world.
REDUCE SURFACE CONTACT
Switching from physical menus, magazines and catalogs to digital ones will reduce surface contact and physical interactions between customers and the crew, Scoot said.
Vice President of Cabin Services Andrew Goh said: “Covid-19 has arisen an urgent need for social distancing … Customers expect these options to be available to give them peace of mind about their health and safety.”
The portal will also allow the carrier to generate advertising revenue and reduce its annual paper consumption by more than 156 tons, the equivalent of more than 2,000 trees.
Wilson said the launch of the portal was sped up a few months due to Covid-19.
While he declined to reveal how much it cost, he told The New Paper that such investments will eventually allow Scoot to emerge stronger.
“It makes us more agile and efficient. The secret of an airline’s success is a low unit cost, which allows it to offer low ticket prices. Therefore, the investments we have made in this really allow us to be more competitive in prices. . “
This is one of the advantages Scoot is about to take advantage of once the borders are reopened, Wilson said.
“Scoot is primarily aimed at leisure travelers and I think leisure travel is likely to come back faster than business travel …
“The fact that we fly regionally keeps people in their comfort zones and we are mostly point-to-point, so we just need Singapore and one other country to open their borders and we can fill our flights,” he added.
The New Zealander, who rejoined Scoot as CEO in April just days before the circuit breaker measures went into effect, said air travel in the short term will be more digitally enabled, minimizing contact and interactions between passengers. and the airline crew.
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