“The carrier will be announcing more flights to India in the coming months.”
— Lee Lik Hsin, Executive Vice President, Commercial at Singapore Airlines
Singapore Airlines has decided to increase the number of flights to India. Incidentall, the group is currently operating at around 75 per cent of its pre-pandemic capacity, reported PTI.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group, comprising Singapore Airlines and low-cost airline Scoot, currently serves 13 destinations across India. According to Lee Lik Hsin, Executive Vice President, Commercial at Singapore Airlines, the carrier will be announcing more flights to India in the coming months.
“The Indian market is recovering very strongly as well. We are seeing good load factors… we will be able to hopefully announce increases in flights over the next two schedules… whether it is for the winter schedule starting from October or even for next year,” Lee Lik Hsin told reporters at an interaction at Changi airport recently.
“There is a very speedy recovery phase we are seeing right now…We will put in a capacity of 61 per cent by the end of June, 67 per cent by the end of September… very, very strong load factors for April.”
— Lee Lik Hsin
At present, Singapore Airlines operates 73 weekly flights to Singapore from eight Indian cities- Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Kochi and Hyderabad. Scoot operates 38 flights from Amritsar, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Tiruchirappalli, Trivandrum and Visakhapatnam.
A Singapore Airlines spokesperson said that market feedback indicated that the current outbound traffic from India comprised primarily pent-up leisure traffic, while business travel would take longer to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Apart from resuming Airbus A380 plane services from Mumbai and Delhi, the airline, in January, launched its new Boeing 737-8 product from Hyderabad, Kochi, and Kolkata. This includes seats that recline into fully-flat beds in the business class.
Lee Lik Hsin also said there was a “very speedy recovery phase we are seeing right now…We will put in a capacity of 61 per cent by the end of June, 67 per cent by the end of September… very, very strong load factors for April,” he said. In April, SIA Group’s load factor rose 18 per cent.
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