News
SIA confirms Canberra/Wellington in partnership with Virgin Australia
January 22nd 2016
Singapore Airlines (SIA) confirmed mid-week that it would launch a four-weekly B777-200ER Singapore-Canberra-Wellington service from September 20. Read More » It will team up with partner Virgin Australia, in which SIA holds 22.8%, to provide onward connectivity to other cities in Australia. Virgin’s long held strategy has been to pick up a bigger share of corporate and government travel. Both carriers’ long-standing partner, Air New Zealand, is understood to be less than thrilled with the announcement.
SIA said it has examined the prospect of flying to Canberra for the last three years, but found the business case did not stack up without the addition of the Wellington sector. It chose to use a B777 configured with 38 business class and 228 economy seats over the A330. The former offers more seats upfront on a route expected to attract a proportionally larger amount of premium traffic. The route could also be an ideal candidate for the A350, the first of which SIA said it would receive “at the end of February”.
"We have looked at this service for quite a while and built a robust business case," said SIA CEO, Goh Choon Phong. "We have been in discussions with the various partners – the airport, the [Australian Capital Territory government] and our alliance partners. We believe this will be a successful operation and we believe we will be able to grow the operation going forward."
"I can think of no better partner than Singapore Airlines, with its reputation for quality and excellence, to be the first to set Canberra Airport on this historic course," Canberra Airport chairman and owner, Terry Snow, said.
Wellington’s runway is only 2,081 metres long, which could lead to potential payload restrictions on a fully-loaded B777. That said, the airport has mooted plans to extend the runway by 300 metres, although this could be challenging, given there is ocean at either end.
The Star Alliance member SIA last Friday announced the addition of a fourth service, operating three times a week, to Brisbane from May, with the aim of increasing it to daily later in the year. The frequency increase means SIA flies to Brisbane 24 times a week. “SIA is the only international carrier to offer four return flights on a single route to and from Brisbane,” Brisbane Airport Corporation CEO and managing director, Julieanne Alroe, said.
In Singapore, SIA low-cost subsidiary, Scoot, this week launched daily Singapore-Guangzhou B787 flights, replacing double daily A320 services from partner Tigerair, which will continue to fly the route once daily. Guangzhou is Scoot’s sixth destination on the Mainland following Hangzhou, Nanjing, Qingdao, Shenyang and Tianjin.
