JQ is a very useful and proven weapon to retain against anyone trying to go into Qantas's 2/3 of the market, however if no one steps up into the remaining 1/3 within a year or two of a Virgin collapse they may not be able to keep it. In this scenario a Scoot take over of JQ may not be as far out of the field as it first seems.
SIA should come through this but its primary market of premium passengers won't. Those suites and lie flat business class seats will be mostly empty and the economy seats heavily discounted so they need to look for a growth area. Tiger Airways Australia was a debacle, going up against three much larger and well entrenched opponents with a handful of aircraft managed from a portacabin in the car park wasn't going to work anyway. When you add in someone at the top who thought he could play fast and loose with the rules it would never succeed.
The Chinese have a culture of not repeating failure and in a vastly different environment it could be 4th time lucky. Few entities will have any spare cash going and even fewer will be keen to risk it on an airline. Singapore Incorporated should have something left in the kitty and might consider the risk acceptable this time based on:
1. No competition, 2/3 for QF and 1/3 for Scoot, each respects the others market. QF set the fare and Scoot go in 15% under ie too much for the bogans to trade up and not worth it for the top end to trade down. Why have a price war when they can both make more money without one ? This time no one is out to destroy them, peaceful coexistence in a comfortable duopoly. If Virgin had gone along with this strategy instead of starting price and capacity wars they wouldn't be where they are today, going for the corporate market was unforgivable.
2. The operation is already up and running at a decent size with CASA approved people and structures in place. No year long ramp up.
3. Same aircraft as used by Scoot already.
4. AirAsia, Cebu Pacific, the Indonesian, Chinese,Vietnamese and Indian low costs all have a large home market and operate domestic flights. Scoot have a small home market (relatively wealthy though) and no domestic flights. Australia would give them that and fit well into the overall network.
5. SIA could stress the benefits to Australia of maintaining competition on the domestic front and providing connections to the all important Asian markets. There are strong ties between Australia and Singapore already, if a local entity can't take over JQ then Singapore is the next best thing.