March 30, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Maybe I misheard this but is Singapore Airlines stopping their long-standing Manchester route ? Id be grateful if someone could confirm as I have some family from Perth (Oz) who would like to use it.
Thanks
Carl
By: David Kerr - 31st March 2009 at 20:52
Shame really, the Flights been going for as long as I can remember – with the MEGATOPS. Lets hope some other Asian carrier(s) takes advantage of the capacity.
This is the 23rd year of operations here for them – reckon we’ve done quite well for us to survive that long given that it’s a marginal route (operating 777s non-stop was a beneficial move; whichever replacement aircraft they choose to operate here should aid the performance of the route as well, subject to which airlines take advantage of this frequency reduction).
The obvious candidates who are going to benefit are EK, EY and QR as they all have Australia rights, with EY actually going to codeshare with QF from AUH to Australia. This should allow each carrier to look to increase capacity at a suitable juncture.
Air Asia X would probably see the end of SQ here as they’d be able to offer cheaper fares due lower cost structure. And in the long-term, we have Jetstar to look forward to when their 787s come on stream in the 22nd century.
Malaysian would have been better off instead of going to 744s and not increasing frequency to making their flights daily, although I read that they would have needed passengers to sit on the wings to make MAN profitable (rejigging the 744 into 2 class configuration may have been better for MAN, but perhaps not for their long-haul network).
May also be of interest that Finnair has seen huge increase in passenger numbers routing to Asia (up 150% from both LHR and MAN) – they say it’s quicker to route MAN-HEL-HKG rather than MAN-LHR-HKG.
By: JetSet - 31st March 2009 at 19:52
Shame really, the Flights been going for as long as I can remember – with the MEGATOPS. Lets hope some other Asian carrier(s) takes advantage of the capacity.
By: carl727uk - 31st March 2009 at 11:26
ok thanks for letting me know
Carl
By: Grey Area - 30th March 2009 at 17:51
Not quite.
The frequency reduces to 3x weekly from May as part of what appears to be a series of capacity reductions right across their global network.