Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific forced to get leaner
After decades of cornering the airline market in Asia, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines are having to rethink how they do business because of increasing competition from low-cost carriers from China and the Middle East. These new entrants have created chronic excess capacity in the skies in which the two airline companies fly. Furthermore, falling oil prices have ended up being a mixed blessing as they have allowed the other airlines to price more aggressively. Singapore Airlines has created a "transformation office" to review its business while Cathay Pacific has said it may need to retrain and redeploy some employees.
SINGAPORE The rise of budget airlines and powerful emerging carriers from the Middle East and China is forcing two of Asia's best-known players, Singapore Airlines and Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Airways, to rethink the way they do business.

Singapore Airlines' "transformation office," set up in early May with a full-time staff of six, will "fundamentally review our network, products and deployment of our aircraft," chief executive Goh Choon Phong said at a press conference on May 19.