Singapore Airlines (SIA) is world famous as a premium brand, with its Singapore Girl and service putting it constantly among top-ranked airlines. Yet, the main growth in air travel, especially in Asia, is driven by no-frills, budget flights.

So how does SIA maintain its premium edge and, at the same time, carve itself an increasingly bigger slice of the budget dollar? That, says outgoing chairman Stephen Lee, is a conundrum that has occupied SIA and will continue to do so.

One answer has been to start Scoot – a wholly owned budget carrier focusing on medium- and long-haul flights – in mid-2012. But taking this plunge after 40 years of flying high as a premium carrier required more than a year of soul-searching for the company, he revealed to The Sunday Times.

Would it dilute SIA’s brand, being behind a budget carrier? Would it cannibalise the premium business? Would it confuse customers?

In a 90-minute interview, his first since becoming chairman in 2006, Mr Lee said: “The board members needed to go through those key issues and convince themselves. It (the decision to start Scoot) was not a very easy and obvious one.”

Scoot, which now has a fleet of 12 Boeing 787 aircraft, was not SIA’s first foray into budget travel. In 2003, it took a 49 per cent stake in Tigerair, which launched in September 2004, but SIA was not involved in running it.

In just over a decade, Asian budget carriers have gone from an almost-zero presence to carrying 31 per cent of global budget travellers last year, with Asia accounting for much of the growth.

Budget carriers already account for almost 60 per cent of all intra-South-east Asian travel.

Before Scoot was launched, the SIA board was “already very concerned about the rapid growth of the low-cost carriers”, said Mr Lee, who will step down as chairman on Jan 1.

Discussions centred around how SIA, as an established full-service premier airline, could take part in the growth, and indeed, whether it wanted to.

With deep-pocketed Middle Eastern carriers like Dubai’s Emirates expanding aggressively, supply was quickly outstripping demand, which eventually brought fares and yields down. At the other end of the spectrum, low-cost carriers like AirAsia, Jetstar and Lion Air were eating into SIA’s regional business.

From a high of $2 billion in 2008, just before the global financial crisis struck, annual group profits plunged to $1.1 billion in the year ending March 2011, and to $368 million last year.

Squeezed at both ends, SIA went ahead with Scoot, took over Tigerair in March this year and recently announced that both carriers will become one when Tigerair is subsumed under the Scoot brand late next year.

This will reduce consumer confusion and pave the way for Scoot to work more closely with SIA and the group’s regional arm, SilkAir, to bring more people to and through the Changi Airport hub.

This year, profits rose to $804 million for the 12 months to March 31.

Challenges will remain but “we have positioned ourselves to be able to compete successfully and we have the right tools in the box”, Mr Lee said, when asked to highlight key achievements during his tenure.

For the first time in many years, SIA also has the right aircraft: the Airbus 350 which offers lower operating costs for long-haul flights than other similar-sized planes in SIA’s fleet. This has allowed SIA – which has bought 67 of the planes – to expand into new markets, including launching non-stop flights from Singapore to San Francisco in October.

Even as SIA plans to pursue both markets, growth in the budget segment will outpace the demand for premium long-haul flights, analysts said. The question is what impact this will have in SIA’s books.

Today, 80 per cent of SIA’s revenue comes from the full-service business. “It will be different… It can be quite different” in the future, Mr Lee said, though he declined to speculate further.

According to aviation analyst Shukor Yusof of Endau Analytics, SIA will continue to focus on premium “because it still exists and will remain key for SIA’s bottom line…

“But the business will never be as profitable as it was before, perhaps even a lot less. That said, full service will still continue to be SIA’s bread and butter 10 years from now – easily 60 per cent to 65 per cent of annual turnover.”

A key factor in the equation is how successful SIA will be in engaging the next generation of travellers, Mr Lee said – in particular those between the ages of about 18 and 30.

“What does the brand mean to them? I’m not sure that when they become financially more secure they will automatically move on to premium travel. This is a group that might have grown up with low-cost carriers, so how we engage them will be a critical success factor,” he stressed.

SIA must give customers what they want “rather than we go and design the product and expect the market to follow us”, he added.

“The challenges going forward are many… Whether SIA will be successful will depend on how quickly we can adjust to demand changes and whether we have the foresight to see what others cannot see.

“It will please me to see SIA succeed beyond what we’ve achieved today, continue to be the iconic company that it is and continue to be a leader in the industry.

“I have done what I can during my stint. It’s now time for Peter to take the company forward… I will be a great cheerleader, albeit from the sidelines.”

Mr Peter Seah, currently SIA deputy chairman and chairman of DBS Group Holdings, will succeed Mr Lee on Jan 1.

Competition will get tougher but SIA will fight, Mr Lee said.

With a 49 per cent stake in Indian carrier Vistara and 23 per cent in Virgin Australia, SIA is also benefiting from growth in other key markets.

One regret is failure to penetrate the Chinese market, including foiled plans to take a stake in China Eastern Airlines.

“We tried…,” Mr Lee said wistfully. “We were not successful.”

This article was first published on Dec 11, 2016.
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Tenants at Parkland Green in East Coast Park, which opened to fanfare two years ago, are struggling despite several events held there in a bid to drum up excitement for the lifestyle spot.

Six of the 11 businesses in the area next to Carpark C1 – restaurants, cafes and shops – have seen earnings drop by up to 30 per cent since January last year, the peak of business. The rest say trade has been lukewarm since they moved in when the place opened, with a handful of customers on weekdays and more on weekends.

They think this is due to several reasons: The imposition of carpark charges there about a year ago and competition from the reopened Marine Cove – a popular area with the iconic McDonald’s outlet a four-minute drive away – in June this year.

In the months after Parkland Green opened in September 2014, parking was free and eateries there were packed on weekends and even on weekday evenings.

Tenants say the situation started going downhill around the end of last year and the start of this year.

To turn things around, the businesses have approached the National Parks Board (NParks) – which manages Parkland Green – several times to ask that activities be organised at the area’s 1ha open lawn.

Apart from events such as a movie screening, free weekly workout classes have also been held on weekends for adults and children since August this year.

The latest initiative was held yesterday. Called A Splash Of Colour – a free event with activities such as bubble soccer (a game in which players kick around a soccer ball with their upper bodies cocooned within giant plastic bubbles), skating and roller-blading lessons, in-store promotions and performances by buskers – it was timed to coincide with the school holidays.

Some of the events are a success, say tenants, but others do poorly.

Tenants say they were told to expect at least 1,000 visitors to a movie screening event held in August, but only 100 people showed up.

At Atmosphere Bistro & Bar, business has fallen by 30 per cent since January. Its managing director Chiam Wee Leong, 32, says he expected the dip following the reopening of Marine Cove, but added that there were bigger factors at play, such as the dismal retail climate.

“If I were a parent, I’d definitely take my kids to Marine Cove because it has a big playground. The economy is doing poorly, so people are spending less where they can. Malls and many other retailers have also been hit,” he says.

He started pizza-making classes for children earlier this year, in a bid to keep families coming to his establishment. The response has been good, so he plans to roll out classes to teach participants to make pineapple tarts and muffins.

The other affected tenants did not want to be named, but Mr Desmond Jose, manager of the 148-seat Patro’s Sports Bar & Restaurant, says Marine Cove has “definitely taken some of our weekday lunchtime clientele”.

When contacted, NParks did not elaborate on plans it had for the area, but senior director Tan Lai Kheng says: “We hope park users will enjoy these educational and fun activities and events made possible through collaborations with our partners.”

For yesterday’s event, the government agency bore the costs of promotional materials and chalk for the mass chalk-art activities.

The owner of skating and beach equipment retail store Hvper Sport, Mr Eddie Chua, 50, who organised the free bubble soccer, skating and roller-blading lessons for A Splash Of Colour, says he is happy NParks initiated this one-day event.

“Instead of waiting for the economy to turn, I think it will benefit all of us here if we try to band together and do something sustainable regularly,” he adds.

“We have beautiful stretches of grass here. It’s up to us tenants to think of how to co-host activities and use the space.”

Meanwhile, taxi driver Lim Kee Long, 56, says he heads to Parkland Green every weekend with his wife and two children.

“I don’t go there for the events or activities. I just go there to exercise, eat and relax with my family. It’s a nice spot and I like that it’s less crowded than some of the other parts of the park,” he says.

Business as usual at East Coast Seafood Centre

Despite waves of change and intense competition with other areas of East Coast Park, tenants at another stretch of the park are holding their own.

A sign that reads “Business As Usual” calls out to motorists driving past the carpark entrance of the East Coast Seafood Centre and the five tenants there say things have stabilised. One of them, Enak Enak Hong Kong Tea House, has managed to improve business by about 35 per cent since June.

The centre has made the news several times since it opened in 1985. It had eight tenants then and boasted big-name restaurants such as Long Beach, Jumbo and Red House. Up till the 1990s, it was typical for diners to queue for about an hour to get a seat at the seafood restaurants there.

In 2005, it underwent a $2-million revamp by the National Parks Board (NParks). It reopened six months later with a new coat of paint, wider pavements and better drainage.

Last year, after 30 years at the centre, Red House Seafood closed to make way for a landscaped lawn. Restaurants No Signboard Seafood and Fisherman’s Village also exited last year after their leases expired.

A spokesman for Red House said last year that the centre was probably on its last legs as crowds had “thinned drastically since 2004” and people could easily get seafood elsewhere, including at neighbourhood eateries.

The situation, however, seems to have improved since then.

Mr Jamal Abu Bakar, manager of Enak Enak Hong Kong Tea House, a halal seafood restaurant that opened there last April, says business was poor for the first six months. “It was very rough,” the 50-yearold says, adding that business was a far cry from its other outlet at Simpang Bedok, which is usually packed.

The management decided to advertise in the media this year and started renting out its second-floor space to community centres, schools and corporate groups. Since June this year, things have improved and Mr Jamal says it is now usually fully booked on weekends.

Other restaurants on the stretch are long-time tenants Jumbo Seafood Restaurant and Long Beach Seafood Restaurant, and newer players Rong Heng Seafood and Ubin First Stop Restaurant.

A Jumbo Seafood spokesman says the outlet at the centre has seen “relatively stable business” over the past few years. “The arrival of new tenants has not had a significant impact,” he says.

To stay competitive, the restaurant regularly engages with its 54,000 loyalty members and has promotional tie-ups with credit cards and other payment gateways.

Ubin First Stop Restaurant is the newest kid on the block – it moved there in July this year.

Its business development manager, Mr Joshua Sim, 30, says business has been “okay” on weekdays and gets “better” on weekends. “We are against big brands, so competition is stiff. But we have loyal customers,” he says.

The restaurant moved to East Coast when its lease at Changi Village expired. “The crowd there was much better than at the Seafood Centre,” adds Mr Sim.

He intends to stick it out at the Seafood Centre. The restaurant has been trying to woo customers with its signature dishes, such as sambal chilli crab, “leather jacket” fish and “manis chye”, a type of kampung vegetable that the restaurant imports from Malaysia.

“We just moved here, so I expect that the first few years will be tough,” he says.

This article was first published on Dec 11, 2016.
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When he was just seven, Javier Tan had a stem-cell transplant that was meant to save his life.

Instead, his body rejected it, and he developed a bone infection so severe that doctors thought he would lose his leg.

Finding another donor would normally have meant a wait of several more months.

Instead, he got one within weeks, and kept his leg, thanks to a novel transplant method that requires the donor to be only a 50 per cent – not 100 per cent – match. This meant that his parents, who had been ruled out before, became suitable donors.

Javier, who suffered from a rare genetic condition which caused his blood count to drop to dangerously low levels, needed a stem-cell transplant so his body could create new blood to save his life and fight the infection in his leg.

The conventional gold-standard treatment called for a complete human leukocyte antigen (HLA) match. HLA is a protein found on most cells used to match a patient and donor for bone marrow or cord blood – which contains stem cells. This time, though, doctors opted for a haploidentical transplant.

Here, specific immune cells – the T-cells responsible for attacking foreign bodies and in Javier’s case, the newly transplanted cells – were removed, so his body did not reject the second batch of stem cells from his father.

It was a success.

Javier, now nine, is a healthy Primary 3 pupil. He is among over 60 people here, from three public hospitals and a cancer centre, who have undergone the life-saving haploidentical transplant since it was introduced here about a decade ago.

The relatively new transplant method allows virtually anyone to have a suitable donor, said Dr Rajat Bhattacharyya, a consultant at the department of paediatric sub-specialities at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH).

Since October 2014, doctors at KKH have treated four children with this method, two with rare immune disease, including Javier who suffered from Fanconi anaemia. The two others had cancer and bone marrow failure.

At the Singapore General Hospital (SGH), it has been used to treat about 10 adult patients since 2004, mostly those with leukaemia.

The National University Hospital (NUH), the first to successfully implement the procedure here for children, and with the largest number treated so far, has had 38 successful transplants on children since 2010, while the National University Cancer Institute, Singapore (NCIS) has done eight successful transplants on adults since 2011. Both mostly used the method to treat the blood cancer leukaemia.

The proportion of patients undergoing such transplants has risen at NCIS from 3 to 5 per cent in 2011 to about 10 to 15 per cent today. At NUH, the figure has risen from 20 per cent in 2012 to around 80 per cent since last year.

Without the new method, the chance of a parent being a match for his child is low, say doctors. So they have always turned to siblings, where there is a one in four chance of a match.

When that fails, the search is widened to unrelated donors, which means the wait for a perfect match can stretch many months. For people from minority ethnic groups, the search can be futile.

A haploidentical transplant provides hope for those patients who otherwise would have been unable to go through the procedure, noted Dr Frances Yeap, associate consultant at NUH’s division of paediatric haematology and oncology.

Recalling her son’s ordeal two years ago, Javier’s mother, Mrs Vivian Tan, 34, a project manager, said she had been at her wits’ end when doctors told her they might have to amputate his leg.

The transplant that took place in January last year with his father’s bone marrow was a success.

And after over a year out of school, Javier returned to his studies in May. He was recently awarded good progress awards in both English and Chinese, said Mrs Tan proudly. “I am definitely relieved and thankful that he has his health back,” she said.

Knowledge on problem cells reduces risk of death

Early attempts at haploidentical transplants – where the donor’s and recipient’s tissue types are not a perfect match – frequently ended in death, mainly because of graft versus host disease (GVHD) and graft rejection in transplantation.

In GVHD, the white blood cells in the donor’s stem cells attack the recipient’s tissue. In graft rejection, transplanted stem cells are destroyed by the donor’s body.

However, doctors now have knowledge about the specific cells that cause GVHD which have made half-matched transplants a reality.

Said Dr Rajat Bhattacharyya, a consultant at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital’s department of paediatric sub-specialities: “With this knowledge, you can actually select and take out these cells.”

The process of removing the problematic cells using a machine takes just one day, and once the remaining cells are transplanted, it takes around 10 to 14 days for them to grow and start producing new cells in the patient’s body.

Dr Frances Yeap, associate consultant at the National University Hospital’s division of paediatric haematology and oncology, said another method is to administer chemotherapy drugs to patients to significantly reduce their T-cells – the immune cells which cause GVHD.

This was started by doctors in Johns Hopkins in the US and is very popular around the world, especially in countries where they do not have the set-up and facilities to do cell manipulation, she added.

This article was first published on Dec 11, 2016.
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An old woman answers a knock on her door, sees someone who claims to be a Housing Board contractor and ends up paying for a renovation job that she does not need.

Bogus contractors have been targeting elderly people in public housing estates, telling residents that they have been appointed by the HDB to carry out repair works.

“These bogus contractors tend to target the elderly and operate mainly during office hours, when the elderly are likely to be home alone,” said an HDB spokesman in response to queries.

Some even use pressure tactics, claiming that HDB will take action against them if the works are not carried out, she added.

The “required works” include replacing doors, rubbish chute covers or sewage pipes, installing security systems and repairing spalling concrete or leaking ceilings.

Some fake contractors also appear in estates with ongoing upgrading or construction works to solicit business from unsuspecting residents, the HDB said.

To tackle this problem, the statutory board has worked with the police and the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case) to issue warning posters around the island.

About 2,000 of them have been put up since March, and are displayed at all the 21 HDB branches, as well as at blocks where the imposters are likely to strike.

These include newly completed developments, blocks undergoing upgrading and blocks where complaints have been received.

Consumer watchdog Case said it has received 52 reports of such cases since 2013. The police were informed of 10 cases from 2012 to 2014. A spokesman said figures for the past two years are not readily available. Last year, however, police arrested nine people from a renovation firm suspected of passing themselves off as government representatives to get business.

The firm had had many names, including Shinden General Contractor, Second Team General Contractor, Teamwork Renovation, Homework General Contractor and Upgrading General Contractor.

Such cases are considered “cheating by personation”. Those found guilty face up to five years’ jail and/or a fine.

Case executive director Seah Seng Choon said resolving the problem can be tricky.

“We do see some contractors closing down and setting up a new business after being flagged… with the same modus operandi,” he said.

He pointed out that when a company closes down, it makes it harder for a customer to get his money back or even locate the contractor.

Consumers should be vigilant and confirm the authenticity of any contractor before engaging their services, Mr Seah said.

The HDB said residents will be given prior notice if works need to be carried out in the flats. Genuine officers are also issued with a staff card bearing their photo. Residents are advised to request identification documents for verification.

“Do not commit to anything on the spot and always take time to respond to the contractor,” said Mr Seah. “Do not make any payment such as deposits until and unless the HDB office confirms that such renovation is a requirement specified by them.”

If in doubt, call the HDB branch service line on 1800-225-5432 to verify a contractor’s visit.

This article was first published on Dec 11, 2016.
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