Singapore Airlines to deploy Airbus A380 on Delhi, Mumbai routes; increase passenger capacity to India

Passengers from India have made up the largest number of overseas arrivals in Singapore, where 54,530 Indians arrived in Singapore by air.

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As the Singapore government announced the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions in the country on April 22, Singapore's national carrier gears up to launch the A380 services to New Delhi and Mumbai in anticipation of the high demand for flights from those two cities to Singapore and beyond.

The government announced on Friday, (April 22), that from next Tuesday, residents will no longer be required to use TraceTogether, a system for Covid-19 exposure contact tracing and that all vaccinated travellers can enter Singapore without restrictions and with no need for testing.

The announcement was warmly welcomed by those in the travel industry and one of the main beneficiaries is Singapore Airlines (SIA). Singapore’s national carrier had earlier announced that it will be launching A380 services to New Delhi and Mumbai due to high demand for flights.

SIA’s configuration on the Superjumbo allows it to accommodate over 470 passengers in four classes. In recent months, travellers from India have made up the largest number of overseas arrivals in Singapore. For the first three months of this year, 54,530 Indians arrived in Singapore by air, almost double the next two largest groups who were from Indonesia (26,370) and Malaysia (20,270).

Altogether, a total of 246,120 visitors arrived in Singapore during the first calendar quarter this year, still a far cry from the same pre-pandemic quarter in 2019 of 4.69 million. Even before the lifting of these Covid-era measures, SIA had already reported "a significant increase in passenger demand at both SIA and Scoot" in their March 2022 operating statistics update. The airline said that this was due to the easing of travel restrictions in almost all key markets and the Singapore government's increased Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) quota for daily arrivals.

The VTL scheme is now no longer in place since all restrictions on visitor arrivals have been removed for those vaccinated.Singapore Airlines reported that its two airlines, SIA and budget airline Scoot, carried a total of 893,000 passengers during March, up from 544,600 in February 2022. Group passenger capacity (measured in available seat kilometres) reached 51 percent of pre-Covid-19 levels in March 2022, seven percentage points above the month before.

Group passenger load factor (PLF) improved 15.4 percentage points to 54.5 percent (a 41.7 percent increase year-on-year), the highest since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.Based on the airlines` current published schedule, it expects passenger capacity to reach around 61 percent of pre-Covid levels by May 2022.

As of the end of March 2022, Singapore Airlines’ passenger network covered 93 destinations including Singapore with SIA serving 69 destinations and Scoot 43. This was around two-thirds of the points flown before the pandemic. As of now, Singapore Airlines flies to 14 Indian cities, covering eight with full-service carrier SIA and seven with Scoot. Both carriers fly to Hyderabad.

With most of its Southeast Asian competitors struggling during the pandemic, with some still in bankruptcy courts, some just emerging and others operating under tight financial constraints, Singapore Airlines stands to benefit the most as Southeast Asian countries open their borders.

Singapore tourism industry players have commented that the lifting of testing requirements for travellers is a massive boost for leisure travel, which has been lagging business travel. Some say that with its neighbours also relaxing their border controls, visitor arrivals could double in the next few months.

Founder and director of Nam Ho DMC, Mahesh Pawanaskar, a firm which specializes in the Indian market, said to The Straits Times that his company handled about 150 visitors in March, with the numbers spiking to 700 in April. He added, "For May, we can surely expect strong growth, at least double of what we are seeing in April."

(With inputs from ANI)