Singapore Airlines (SIA) is adding extra flights to its already-hefty Australian schedule in 2017, with Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney set to receive more services.
Melbourne will increase to 31 flights a week from July 17 2017, from 28 currently, with a fifth daily service to operate on Monday, Friday and Saturday with Airbus A330-300s as a red-eye from Singapore and lunchtime departure from the Victorian capital.
Meanwhile, SIA is switching one of its four daily Melbourne-Singapore flights to a four-class Boeing 777-300ER featuring first, business, premium economy and economy from January.
On the Brisbane-Singapore route, SIA said it grow its schedule to 28 flights a week, from 24 currently, from August 22 2017.
And the Star Alliance member will have 35 flights a week (or five flights a day) on the Sydney-Singapore route during the peak travel period between June and September 2017. Outside of this peak period, SIA operates 33 times a week between Sydney and Singapore. Separately, SIA said it would have double-daily A380 flights to the NSW capital during the peak winter period.
The planned capacity increases comes after SIA launched its new Capital Express service linking Singapore, Canberra and Wellington in September.
The Virgin Australia shareholder and alliance partner had planned a new Sydney-Jakarta-Singapore flight that was due to launch in November. However, the launch was postponed due to what SIA said was runway maintenance works at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
http://thewofa.com/2016/11/singapore-airlines-postpones-sydney-jakarta-singpore-service/
http://thewofa.com/2016/09/canberra-airport-welcomes-inaugural-singapore-airlines-service/
And the airline has also boosted its premium passenger offering with a new SilverKris lounge at Brisbane Airport.
SIA regional vice president for South West Pacific Tan Tiow Kor noted 2017 marked the airline’s 50th year of operations to Australia.
“We are looking forward to the year ahead and are excited by the prospect of celebrating our 50th anniversary flying to Australia,” Tan said in a statement.
“The increase in services and capacity announced today reinforce our longstanding commitment and investment to Australia and the South West Pacific region.”
Figures from the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics showed SIA was Australia’s second largest foreign carrier in the 12 months to June 30 2016 with an 8.4 per cent share of the market in terms of passengers carried.
At its peak, SIA and its regional wing Silkair have 145 flights a week between Singapore and Australia, serving Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Cairns, Darwin, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.
