Space For Rent
Monday, April 25, 2016, Baishakh 12, 1423 BS, Rajab 17, 1437 Hijri


Singapore Airlines spreads wings in India
Published :Monday, 25 April, 2016,  Time : 12:00 AM  View Count : 14

NEW DELHI, April 24: The Singapore Airlines (SIA) group is now the biggest foreign airline in India in terms of number of subsidiaries operating as well as the cities it flies to. On Friday, the group announced that its low-cost and medium-haul arm Scoot will begin flights between Singapore and Chennai and Amritsar from next month and between Singapore and Jaipur from October.
With Scoot's entry, all passenger airlines of SIA group now operate to India, beginning with the premium long haul SIA, budget Scoot, full service Silk Air and low-cost Tiger Airways. SIA and Scoot have wide body planes that can fly long distances, while Silk Air and Tiger operate the narrow body Airbus A-320s that can fly non-stop up to five hours.
In addition, SIA holds a 49% stake in Vistara with the remaining 51% with Tatas. Vistara is also expected to begin international flights soon after India relaxes the rules for domestic airlines to fly abroad.
"The SIA Group is the largest foreign airline in India in terms of reach as SIA, Scoot, Silk and Tiger will fly to 15 cities in the country. This is the largest after Air India (in terms of offering direct international flights out of Indian cities). Our strategy is to develop a new market (city) by launching flights with Silk or Tiger. And then when the market grows, deploy wide body planes of SIA or Scoot," Bharath Mahadevan, country head of Scoot, told TOI. Jet Airways offers direct international flights out of 13 Indian cities."SIA used to operate on the Amritsar-Singapore route from 2004 to 2008. The load factors were good at about 70%. But the full service model was not suited for this route.
The A-320s of Tiger did not have the range for this route. Now, we will restart this route with Scoot that operates Dreamliners on a low cost model," Mahadevan said. Similarly, Tiger will pull out of Chennai-Singapore sector as the market is now grown enough to fill up wide body planes of Scoot and SIA. "Fare on India-Australia and India-Bali routes is in the range of Rs 60,000-70,000 and Rs 40,000, respectively. Scoot fares will about half of that," he said.
"Scoot is offering a limited-time promotion from now till 2129 hours on Thursday (April 28) for guests booking from India to Scoot's destinations across its network. One-way economy fares from Chennai, Amritsar and Jaipur start from $64 to Singapore and $189 to Sydney, $179 and $459 for ScootBiz to Singapore and Sydney respectively," Scoot said in a statement.
Scoot will start flights from Chennai and Amritsar to Singapore on May 24, while Jaipur-Singapore flights will start on 2 October.    ?TNN











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