Airline diplomacy

Soft power used to be a panda and a concert pianist. But these days?

Look at London's Langham Hotel last week: industry insiders love to quip that the annual Skytrax World Airline Awards are "the Oscars of aviation", but that only makes sense if the CEO of Delta, like, slaps the event MC over a spicy legroom joke, or the chair of Cathay, say, crowd-surfs the banquettes like Roberto Benigni.

Rather, these airline awards poll 25 million passengers across 100+ nationalities about 300+ airlines, evaluating everything from boarding flow to cabin service.

And last week in that London ballroom, for the 25th year, the Skytrax founder opened an envelope to reveal that the year’s best carrier is...

• 🇸🇬 Singapore Airlines (#1)

Reclaiming the crown from the Qataris for a sixth win, this news is less about fast wi-fi or tasty satay, and more the fruition of Lee Kuan Yew's big bet back in 1975: that's when the city-state's founder overruled his own advisors and instead opted to sink a frightening 11% of his entire GDP into building what is now Changi Airport.

Why? He understood that a tiny island with no natural resources had its best shot if it could embed itself into global trade. So these days, Singapore handles nearly 2% of the world's international passengers, and the aviation sector underpins ~12% of Singapore's entire GDP when you include flow-on tourism, logistics, and the like.

That's really why this Skytrax award is a big deal for Singapore — yes, it collects rent on all that traffic, and treats each Airbus like a flying embassy projecting the national brand with every steamed towel, but that's all still really downstream of passenger preference, which Singapore still sees as a moat against...

• 🇶🇦 Qatar Airways (#2)

Unlike the Singaporeans, the Qataris are sitting on staggering natural wealth: we’re talking 11% of the world's proven natural gas, worth ~$12T at today's prices.

So why spend the last two decades and $100B+ building this vast new aviation empire? Yes, luxury cabins and mega-hubs are — like the 2022 FIFA World Cup — a prestige flex and a way to diversify away from gas.

But for Qatar, aviation is also an insurance policy in a ruthless neighbourhood.

How ruthless? Recall the Saudis, Emiratis, Bahrainis, and Egyptians only lifted their blockade on the Qataris in 2021, irked at how Qatar funds political Islam, wields Al Jazeera news, and ~cosies up to Iran. The Saudis reportedly even drafted invasion plans, and hinted at a massive new border canal filled with nuclear waste (!) to "transform the small terrorist state of Qatar into an island"!

So… how does champagne-on-takeoff help?

Funnelling 30 million foreigners through your peninsula is basically a way to hope the world becomes more aware of — and invested in — your survival. You’re almost buying witnesses, though weird how those witnesses can lose enthusiasm once you start strip-searching random women or fending off Iranian missiles.

Anyway, if Singapore and Qatar are two small states using aviation to project out, let's see what happens when a massive power uses an airline to project inwards...

• 🇭🇰 Cathay Pacific (#3)

Hong Kong's podium finish completes a remarkable comeback. Recall that the storied airline got caught in the crossfire back during the city's massive pro-democracy protests: when flight crews joined the march, Beijing threatened the carrier with crippling mainland bans unless it fell into line.

So as top execs then got purged and dissident staff were fired, Hong Kong plunged into strict Covid lockdowns and the chaos saw Cathay slide out of the top tier.

But after a few years of damage control, Cathay is now back, not so much as that same symbol of free-market Hong Kong, but as something closer to Beijing's commercial tether. By 2021, the Party's five-year-plans were formally designating Hong Kong as China's "international aviation hub".

Beijing didn't name-drop Cathay specifically, but it didn't have to: Cathay controls ~half of Hong Kong's seat capacity, and state-owned Air China owns a 29.99% stake in Cathay with four board seats — that’s effectively a veto over any major calls, even though British conglomerate Swire Pacific remains the controlling shareholder.

All that to say that, arguably, Cathay's role is now less about projecting Hong Kong to the world, and more about anchoring it into not just China generally, but its 86-million-person 'Greater Bay Area' specifically: aka, a trusted carrier to convince foreign capital you’re still open for business, just, you know... on mainland rules.

Then let's wrap with an airline helping project unapologetically outwards...

• 🇹🇷 Turkish Airlines (#5)

It's no accident the Turks now hold the record for flying to more countries than any other carrier on Earth: we're talking 130+ and counting. It’s the same reason Turkey also now has the world's third-largest embassy network.

That reason? It’s President Erdogan's attempt to reframe Turkey not as Europe's periphery, but as the world’s "Afro-Eurasian power": a central, non-aligned nexus between Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

So the Turks have now quietly built a spiderweb network connecting ~350 emerging world destinations direct to Istanbul, establishing Turkey as the primary broker for the Global South. It's almost like the foreign ministry itself is selling seats.

So all that to say that yes, soft power is still a panda, dear Intriguer. And sure, it’s also still about sipping vintage Krug between bites of Caspian caviar in a Qsuite getting hurled through the atmosphere at Mach 0.82.

But it's also a layover you cannot reroute. It's 30 million annual witnesses to whatever stunt the Saudis or Iranians might pull next. It's a commercial leash on a free market enclave. And maybe it’s even a land-grab for a modern empire.

Sound even smarter:

• The top 10 airlines included 🇸🇬 Singapore, 🇶🇦 Qatar, 🇭🇰 Cathay, 🇯🇵 ANA, 🇹🇷 Turkish, 🇦🇪 Emirates, 🇫🇷 Air France, 🇨🇳 Hainan, 🇯🇵 Japan Airlines, and 🇰🇷 Korean Air.

• Other notables include 🇬🇧 British at #23, 🇺🇸 Delta at #25, 🇪🇹 Ethiopian at #36, 🇨🇱 LATAM at #42, and 🇮🇳 Air India at #57.