I was looking for a new book to read, and luckily, I was one of the winners in Simpliflying’s Tweepitition, and received a copy of Flying High in a Competitive Industry: Secrets of the World’s Leading Airline, which is about Singapore Airlines. I was very excited to start reading since I didn’t know a whole lot about the carrier. Many thanks to Shashank Nigam for running this contest!
First, I’d like to say that this is not a book for airplane geeks, or at least not all of them. The book reads like a business case study for students, which makes perfect sense since it’s published by McGraw-Hill Education.
Just like most business cases, the book opens up with a couple of chapters covering the airline industry as a whole which are very well done and have very well-written descriptions of the challenges in the industry faces. To be honest, if one of my friends wanted to learn more about the global airline industry, I would tell them to read these opening chapters.
The next chapter, “Key Drivers of SIA’s Performance,” was also well-done, and includes many useful graphs. For example, there was one graph that compared the labor productivity of various world carriers that was very informative. One section that concerned me, however, was “Alliance And Acquisition Strategy,” which mentioned lots of airline partners, but never mentioned the Star Alliance.
“Achieving Cost-Effective Service Excellence at SIA,” the next chapter, was not all that appealing to me, as it is very weak on actual numbers. It shows how Singapore has low costs per ASK, but that’s about it. And while the authors do write about many of the company’s efforts to save cash, they never really estimate how effective each initiative has been.
This chapter also has one of the things I hate most about business writing today – an overuse of buzzwords! Some section titles from this chapter were “Total Innovation: Integrating Incremental Development with Unanticipated, Discontinuous Innovations,” and my favorite: “Achieving Strategic Synergies through Related Diversification and World-Class Infrastructure.”
The following chapter, “Innovation as a Key to Sustained Service Excellence,” while still a bit heavy on the business-speak, is good. I found reading about how Singapore develops new service offerings to be very informative.
Chapter Six, “Managing People Effectively,” is where this book really shines, I think. Everyone I talk to who has flown Singapore raves about the service, and this chapter shows how Singapore gets it done. I was surprised to learn about how intensive the carrier’s interview process is. The book reports that for cabin crew, “only 3-4% of applicants are hired in each recruitment drive.” I also liked the section describing how frontline employees get a good amount of power when it comes to making decisions. Personally, I think it’s one of the best ways to ensure good service.
The next two chapters focus on the topic “how to win in cut-throat industries,” and I think they’re skip-able, to be honest. The authors introduce a bunch of business concepts, but really don’t relate them to Singapore that well, especially in the first of these two chapters.
The final chapter is a case study that seems completely out of place. It begins to talk about Singapore from the framework that was established earlier…but wait, that was the whole book. Is this a conclusion? Who knows. I was very disappointed to see financial results in this chapter with pretty much no analysis.
So, would I recommend this book? If you’re the type of airplane geek that just enjoys being glued to an airport fence watching arrivals and departures, this isn’t for you. But if you like the business side of things than this might be a worthwhile read. But, the price should be considered. Right now, it’s selling on Amazon for $36, which I think is a bit overpriced.
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