Singapore Airlines is enhancing its capacity to and from India, with newer, bigger aircraft being introduced into service, as it looks to cash in on the growing number of Indians travelling overseas.
Singapore Airlines has been rewarded as the world’s best airline for years. The airline started flying into India 49 years ago, with flights to Chennai. Over the years, it has started flying to other cities. Currently, Singapore Airlines, its regional subsidiary Silk Air and low-cost arm Scoot, together fly to 13 cities in India, making the country the second largest market in Asia, after China, in terms of number of cities Singapore Airlines flies to, David Lim, general manager, Singapore Airlines – India, told THE WEEK.
“We have had double digit growth in the last three years from India. We have been, in terms of capacity, flying more often and flying bigger aircraft, so there has been capacity increase over the last few years,” he said.
The airline in the last two years has introduced several new products coming into India. For instance, In July 2017, it introduced the Airbus A350 long haul aircraft into Mumbai and last year, it launched its Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft to Delhi. This year, Singapore Airlines has started flying the A350 into Bengaluru and Kolkata and from September it will start flying its biggest aircraft Airbus A380, which has been retrofitted with a new cabin, to Mumbai.
It is also increasing the number of services from a few cities. So, by the end of the year, it will start daily services between Singapore and Ahmedabad, versus three times a week in the past. It has also added one more flight to Mumbai, so it now flies 18 times a week between Mumbai and Singapore.
“From 2010, until now, our capacity has gone up by around 40 per cent,” said Lim.
The company is not just tapping into more business and leisure travellers going to Singapore, but also sees big business opportunity from passengers who are travelling beyond to countries like Australia, Japan and the United States.
Singapore Airlines has already announced plans to merge its regional subsidiary Silk Air. In this backdrop, the airline is reorganising its services into India. So, soon Silk Air flights to Hyderabad and Kochi will be replaced by those of Singapore Airlines. Elsewhere, Singapore Airlines will also replace services operated by low cost carrier Scoot to Bengaluru and Kochi. Scoot, on the other hand, has taken over the Singapore – Trivandrum route, earlier serviced by Silk Air.
Lim said that Scoot will fly to the smaller markets like Trichy and Amritsar, while the larger markets will be serviced by Singapore Airlines.
Singapore Airlines is adding more capacity into and from India at a time Indian full service carrier Vistara, in which it owns 49 per cent and the Tata Group the rest, is starting international flights. Just this week, Vistara started its flights to Singapore from Delhi and Mumbai.
Lim, however, is not too worried of overlap. Jet Airways commanded the highest market share in international markets from India, and its grounding in April has left a void. Lim says the capacity between Mumbai and Singapore has fallen and therefore there is actually a need for more capacity between the two financial centres.
He also sees Singapore Airlines and Vistara complementing each other. The two, for instance, have a code-share agreement, which will help Singapore Airlines fly more passengers from beyond the 13 cities it currently flies to. Furthermore, the two carriers have reciprocal lounge agreement, and frequent flyer programme. So, Club Vistara members can fly on Singapore and accrue miles and Singapore’s KrisFlyer members when they fly domestically on Vistara, get KrisFlyer miles as well.
