SIA merges management of Scoot and Tigerair

Value Aliance-5245 — Lee Lik Hsin and Campbell Wilson.

Singapore Airlines has created a single holding company – Budget Aviation Holdings – which will own and manage its two low-cost airline subsidiaries, the long-haul Scoot and Singapore-based Tigerair.

Current Tigerair Singapore boss Lee Lik Hsin has been appointed CEO of Budget Aviation Holdings in a move that sees founding Scoot CEO, New Zealander Campbell Wilson, move back to parent company Singapore Airlines in August as acting senior vice-president sales and marketing.

“Our baby is in good hands,” Wilson told Scoot staff in an email, The Straits Times reported on Thursday. “Lik Hsin knows Scoot as well as any outsider can, having helped craft the original business case and having served as one of Scoot’s directors in our first couple of years.”

The creation of Budget Aviation Holdings with a single senior management team for Scoot and Tigerair follows Singapore Airlines’ recently completed general offer for the shares in Tigerair it did not already own (the restructure does not affect Tigerair Australia, which since February 2015 has been fully owned by Virgin Australia).

“We launched our general offer so that we could fully realise commercial and operational synergies between Scoot and Tigerair. We are confident that Lik Hsin and his team are up to the task,” SIA CEO Goh Choon Phong said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The holding company structure will drive a deep integration of our low-cost subsidiaries, which are important parts of our portfolio strategy in which we have investments in both the full-service and budget aspects of the airline business.”

Wilson has led Scoot since the airline began flying in 2011. It currently flies 11 Boeing 787-8 and -9 Dreamliners and serves four Australian destinations from its Singapore hub – Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast.

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