SIA cuts more services

Faced with a rapidly-shrinking travel market, SIA, which had earlier announced route cuts to India, the United States and Vancouver, has added to the list Australia and Britain, as well as other points in Asia. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

SINGAPORE Airlines on Tuesday unveiled more route cuts, a day after it said it would reduce capacity by 11 per cent and ground 17 jets in this financial year.

Faced with a rapidly-shrinking travel market, SIA, which had earlier announced route cuts to India, the United States and Vancouver, has added to the list Australia and Britain, as well as other points in Asia.

On the Australia routes, the frequency of service to Sydney will reduce to three times daily till July.

The airline's three times daily service to London will be maintained but the Boeing 747-400 service will be replaced with a B777-300ER from end-March. This will result in 97 fewer seats a day, or a drop of 7.5 per cent.

Flights to Manchester will be at three times weekly from May, down from the present five-weekly. Service to Seoul will be reduced to twice-daily, from its already-reduced schedule of 17 times weekly.

One flight will continue on to San Francisco. To Japan, the Singapore-Bangkok-Tokyo service will reduce from six to five flights per week. Services to China will also change.

Flights to Beijing will decrease from 21 to 17 weekly. Guangzhou and Nanjing services will reduce to five and two per week respectively.

In West Asia, Colombo and Male will each be served by five flights per week, down from seven. Other routes, such as Brisbane, Perth, Fukuoka, Nagoya and Rome will now be operated with variable frequencies depending on the season.

SIA said in a statement on Tuesday: 'The drop in demand owing to the global economic slowdown is the driver of the reduction in capacity. Going forward, Singapore Airlines will continue to monitor demand patterns and will make changes to its network when necessary.'