SIA Engineering Company’s : S59 0% (SIAEC) revenue and number of flights handled by its line maintenance unit now stands at about 80 per cent of its pre-Covid level, the aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) company’s chief executive Ng Chin Hwee said.

“We’re counting on a full recovery to not just get back (to where we were), but transformation is about emerging stronger. Our goal is to exceed how we performed, pre-Covid, in one or two years’ time,” he told reporters at the official launch of SIAEC’s next corporate transformation phase on Monday (May 29). 

This new step, dubbed the “Continuous Improvement Journey (CIJ)”, aims to embed and evolve the organisational changes and improvements SIAEC made in its first two transformation phases in 2018 and 2021.

Transport Minister S Iswaran, who was guest of honour at the launch, said that weekly passenger traffic at Changi Airport is now at 90 per cent of pre-Covid levels. He described this as a “significant milestone”, and noted that it comes about four months after crossing the 80 per cent mark. “It gives us further confidence that passenger traffic will recover to pre-Covid levels by 2024.”

The CIJ differs from the two preceding phases, in that it marks an institutional “DNA change”, said SIAEC, rather than a discrete phase of improvement.

Ng declined to specify the cost of the CIJ, saying: “This is different, (so) we haven’t put a size on the actual budget. But if you see the scale of the investments we have been making since 2018, you can imagine the same amount of effort will be put in for the years to come as well.”

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SIAEC said that the earlier phases yielded more than 150 initiatives and improvements implemented across the company.

Some of these were showcased at the launch event at Changi Airport. They included a robot- and artificial intelligence (AI) guided system for improving engine inspections, a robot for inspecting seat tracks in aircraft undergoing maintenance, and various platform and productivity improvements.

The launch event also showed off staff-driven efforts, including innovations designed by the technicians and engineers, such as a tool for lacing escape slides with less manpower and an automated rig for handling aircraft brakes. Efforts to upskill its staff were showcased as well, such as an avionics and mechanical dual-certification programme for its technicians.

The company pledged to adopt more of such improvements.

David So, SIAEC’s senior vice-president for corporate planning and continuous improvement, said: “Many of these features come from the staff. We want to see more ideas, to continue to modify our tools. With our track inspection robot, for instance, the staff are already thinking about improvements to it, like using it to take measurements and do recording, or to use AI to compare images.”

While hopeful of a full recovery, Ng also cautioned that the aim of the CIJ and its preceding phases is to prepare for a more competitive and difficult environment in future.  

Minister Iswaran alluded to this in his speech at the event, saying that the Asia-Pacific region is expected to become the world’s largest aviation market over the next two decades.

“As competition intensifies, many regional countries are investing significantly in their airports, home carriers and MRO sectors. Meanwhile, in Singapore, our land and manpower constraints will become more binding over time,” he said.

Ng’s comments on the aviation industry’s recovery follow on the company’s earnings for the financial year ended Mar 31, reported earlier this month. The company said that flights handled by its line maintenance unit in Changi in March were 79 per cent of pre-Covid levels, compared to 38 per cent in March 2022. 

“We are hopeful, but there are challenges in the environment, geopolitical factors, recession… We can’t predict what will happen, but we are ready for it. The most important thing is that the organisation is ready if the environment becomes harsher for us,” he said.