Singapore Airlines generic strategy and supporting capabilities Singapore airlines have achieved the holy grail of strategic success: sustainable competitive advantage. Even though the airline industry is extremely challenging, given its disastrous business cycle, over capacity, difficulty of differentiation, high risk people and structural unattractiveness, Singapore airlines has consistently outperformed its competitors throughout its history (Wirts, Heracleous & Pangakar, 2008). One key element of Singapore airlines competitive advantage success is that it manages to navigate skillfully between poles that most companies think of as distinct: delivery service excellence in a cost-effective way, a cost level so low that they are comparable to those of the budget airlines (Wirts et al, 2008). A key challenge of implementing business-level strategies, such as effective differentiation at Singapore airlines combined with superior levels of operational efficiency, in the effective alignment of functional strategies such as HR, marketing or operations with business level strategy (Wirts et al, 2008). Both superior quality and high levels of efficiency have been part of the goals and objectives of Singapore airlines since its founding, which have been to: • Deliver the highest quality of customer service that is safe, reliable and economical; • Generate earnings that provide sufficient resources for investment and satisfactory returns to shareholders; • Adopt HR