She has practically just landed in Barcelona and confesses that she is enjoying it very much. Joan Lim, the new manager of Singapore Airlines for Spain, works in the heart of the Eixample. Unlike many international airlines, her main Spanish office is in the capital of Catalonia, a city the company committed to in 2006.
"I hadn't been to Barcelona yet, although I already knew many things about the city. I was interested and wanted to come. It's a very well-known place in Singapore for the good work that Turisme de Barcelona and Catalonia entities have historically done," Lim tells The New Barcelona Post. "To promote this destination, they have always gone hand in hand with our company, and we are going to continue doing so. It is very, very interesting, and we are going to continue linking it not only with my country but with a good number of places throughout Asia," she states.
Singapore Airlines chose to center its operation on the Iberian Peninsula to and from Barcelona over places like Madrid or Lisbon and at one point even used El Prat Airport as an intermediate stop on its first route to South America: Sao Paulo. Services with the economic capital of Latin America are now part of the company's history (they operated between 2011 and 2016) and had the singularity of being operated under fifth freedom rights. This means that a company from a third country, in this case Singapore, can fly commercially between two other countries that are not its own: Spain and Brazil.
"Currently, we have achieved something similar that we were very interested in commercializing: flights between Barcelona and Milan. These can be purchased in both directions. We thus take advantage of the intermediate stop of flights to and from Singapore to optimize occupancy and make flights more profitable," says the executive.
Until now, flights with a stopover in the capital of Lombardy could not be sold on their European leg, and part of the plane flew empty in the seats occupied by passengers boarding or disembarking in Milan. At the request of the Asian airline, both Italy and Spain have allowed their commercialization, taking into account the exceptionally complicated period that aviation is experiencing, and, for the moment, the authorization is valid until the summer of 2023, although Lim trusts that those it commercializes, which are the only ones offered in a non-low cost version between both cities, can be extended over time.
The desire for direct flights
In addition to the commercial maintenance of flights with Italy, the new manager of Singapore Airlines in Spain has set as an objective the recovery of direct connections, alternating them with those that make a stop in Milan-Malpensa. "Although the intermediate stopover is brief and transit passengers don't even have to get off the plane, it's always more pleasant to fly non-stop between two places. Furthermore, with the direct flight, Barcelona will recover an important catchment market that passes through the Mediterranean coast and reaches northern Spain, also passing through southern France. We are working hard in this regard, and my idea is to recover the direct route as soon as possible," she acknowledges.
Asked about the impact that the commitment of the Persian Gulf airlines to Barcelona has on her company, she acknowledges that the pie must be shared and that these are companies with significant financial muscle, although hers, in addition to high quality, is the only one that currently offers flights that land directly in the heart of Southeast Asia. "Our country is a natural hub between Asia and Europe. From Changi, one of the best airports in the world, you can quickly reach all the countries in our region and those in Oceania, with whom we have a very close link," Lim defends.
Australia
The relationship between the small city-state of Singapore (its surface area does not reach 700 km2 and it is somewhat larger than Andorra, which has 468 km2) and countries like Australia is historical. Both for going to and returning from Europe to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth, the intermediate stop in Singapore, first by boat and then by plane, has been a classic that has ended up uniting both states. In fact, in the index of visitors to the country, Australians are always among the top three, along with the Chinese and Malays.
The relationship between the small city-state of Singapore and countries like Australia is historicalLim herself lived part of her academic training between Singapore and Australia, to then start working 11 years ago at her country's flag carrier airline.In it, she has held different positions in central services to then be assigned as a manager in Beijing and subsequently spent the last three years in her first general management role, that of southern China, based in Guangzhou, Guangdong. "They were tough years, obviously, in the worst of the pandemic, although it was a whole course to face new destinations, like Barcelona, where I will be until 2025. I had the option of going to other cities like Copenhagen, although in the end I ended up choosing Catalonia for this stage of my professional… and also personal life."In the second, he confesses that until now he has known more bars and restaurants than monuments and typical places in Barcelona, although he is already correcting it and intends to get to know his adopted city in depth.
For the moment, his first weeks are being sweet professionally: the occupancy rate is recovering at great speed and is currently very high for both departures and arrivals. The opening of Singapore for vaccinated people and the relaxation of health restrictions since last April 1 have greatly paved the way for these occupancies which, curiously, are almost total in the business cabin, that of high-yield passengers, which is one of the great objectives of any airline: to fill planes and do so in the most profitable way possible.
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