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http://www.straitstimes.com/sing ... to-london-route-via
Qantas to shift base back to Singapore from Dubai; Sydney to London route via Singapore resumes in March
SINGAPORE - After ditching Singapore for Dubai as a stopover for its Australia-Europe flights, the Flying Kangaroo will return to Changi Airport in March next year - five years after its exit.
In a significant boost to Singapore's air hub status, Australia's Qantas said on Thursday (Aug 31), that from March 25, it will, once again, operate its daily Sydney-London service via Singapore.
Since April 2013, the airline has been operating its Sydney-London and Melbourne-London services via Dubai, as part of a 10-year commercial alliance with its national carrier, Emirates. Before that, both flights stopped in Singapore first.
With the recent announcement, the flight from Sydney will be re-routed to operate via Singapore. A new Melbourne-Perth-London service will also be launched.
From next March, Qantas will also increase the number of Melbourne-Singapore flights and operate the service with the bigger A-380 instead of the current A-330.
The additional services will mean an additional 3,806 one-way seats - a 5.5 per cent increase - on Singapore-Australia routes every week.
Capacity on Singapore-Britain routes will increase by 18.3 per cent, or an extra 3,388 one-way seats a week.
The changes are part of plans to shift capacity to a fast-growing Asia market, Qantas' chief executive officer Alan Joyce, said in a statement to the Australian Security Exchange (ASX).
"Customers in Singapore will have a greater choice of services, aircraft and cabins, with first and premium Economy available on the A-380 between Singapore and London as well as between Sydney and Melbourne," he said.
The airline's 12 A-380s will undergo a cabin refurbishment in the second quarter of 2019, which will feature new business class and premium economy seats, a refreshed first cabin and new cushions and fabrics in economy.
It is also likely that the decision by Qantas was prompted by recent security concerns in the Middle East, which led to the United States and Britain imposing bans on the carriage of laptops and other large electronic devices in aircraft cabins, observers say.
Many of those restrictions, however, have since been lifted.
Even as he announced plans to beef up Australia-Singapore services, Mr Joyce stressed that Emirates remains a key partner.
"The first five years of the Qantas-Emirates alliance has been a great success. Emirates has given Qantas customers an unbeatable network into Europe that is still growing... Dubai will remain an important hub for our customers," he said.
Welcoming Qantas' decision to make a comeback, Changi Airport Group's managing director for air hub development Lim Ching Kiat said: "This development secures Changi Airport as the most connected international airport to Australia, in terms of the number of both city links and seats, and strengthens our position as the region's leading air hub.
"We look forward to continue working with Qantas to explore new opportunities to boost its business and operations at Changi."
Australia is among Changi Airport's top five country markets in terms of passenger traffic, with more than 5.5 million passengers travelling between Singapore and Australia annually.
For the first seven months of 2017, passenger traffic between the two countries rose 3.6 per cent year on year to 3.3 million. During this period, Sydney and Melbourne were Changi's 10th and 11th busiest routes respectively.
世界級樟宜機場又一大勝利！澳洲航空將把飛往倫敦航線搬回樟宜，馬勞又有得撈！
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发表于 31-8-2017 01:09 PM
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