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In the face of increasing competition on the India-Singapore sector, Singapore Airlines is set to add a new daily flight between Mumbai and Singapore. The daily flight will take off at 10 pm from Mumbai and is expected to start from October.
At present, Singapore Airlines has a morning daily flight service between the two cities as well as a daily flight at around 12 a.m.
The new flight time will mean that the two Singapore Airlines' daily flights will sandwich its Indian competitors who take off at 11 p.m. daily from Mumbai.
Preference
“We see that the evening flights are much more popular because the flight takes off at night and lands in Singapore early morning giving passengers the full day to enjoy in Singapore,” said Mr G M Toh, General Manager-India, Singapore Airlines.
“Seeing the competition on the sector for the evening flight time, we decided to go all out and offer two daily flights in the evening,” he added.
Limited rights
The changes to the Mumbai schedule would include cutting down the morning daily flight to three times a week. The carrier is also going to start a daily service between Ahmedabad and Singapore. Currently, it has 81 flights from India to Singapore and by the end of October, it will have 86 with one more daily flight between Delhi and Singapore.
Mr Toh added that the traffic rights for Mumbai are very limited which is why the airline is unable to add more. “We utilise the traffic rights where they are available. Places like Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Vizag and others have unlimited rights,” he said.
Low-cost carriers
Commenting on the low-cost carrier market in the South-East Asian region, Mr Toh said, “Low cost carriers worldwide have created a new market segment. In India also, you see a bit of that. There is a lot of demand for low cost carriers in a region like this.”
Earlier this year, Singapore Airlines had also announced intentions of starting a low-cost carrier. The carrier has already set up a new company for low-cost operations. Reports emanating out of Singapore said that the new low-cost carrier could be called ‘Scoot'. However, Mr Toh declined to confirm the name.
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