News
SilkAir B737s to join Scoot fleet
June 29th 2018
As part of its three-year transformation programme, Singapore Airlines Group (SIA Group) will transfer an undisclosed number of B737 jets from its full-service SilkAir subsidiary to low-cost carrier Scoot. Read More »
The SIA Group can earn more money from expanding Scoot’s low-cost operations than investing additional funds into higher unit cost SilkAir. Accelerating the growth of Scoot also will help the group compete more effectively against the much larger AirAsia Group and Indonesia’s Lion Group.
As previously announced, underperforming SilkAir will be folded into mainline SIA from 2020.
The first B737s are expected to be transferred to Scoot in the fourth quarter of this year or early next year, giving the budget airline time to remove SilkAir’s business class seating and to hire B737 cockpit crew.
The addition of the B737 to the Scoot fleet will add some complexity to operations. The LCC flies two A319s, 24 A320s and 17 B787s (with three on order). Scoot also has 39 A320neo on order.
SilkAir has 32 B737 MAXs on its books. With the impending merger of SilkAir into widebody-only mainline SIA, those 32 MAXs had to be placed somewhere within the group and Scoot was the best solution to the problem.
