Hyderabad: Singapore Airlines Group is rejigging its Hyderabad itineraries. Starting at the end of October, it will be pulling out its low-cost carrier Scoot from the Hyderabad market while ramping up the presence of its full-service airlines Singapore Airlines (SIA) to 12 flights a week, up from its existing schedule of seven flights a week.
Scoot, which is a subsidiary of Singapore’s national carrier SIA, will operate its last flight out of Hyderabad on October 28 with SIA’s new schedule kicking in from October 29 as it takes over Scoot's daily services between Hyderabad and Singapore.
Scoot currently operates daily Hyderabad-Singapore-Hyderabad flights using narrow body Airbus 320s.
SIA, which has completed 20 years of operations from Hyderabad, currently operates wide body A-350s four days a week from Hyderabad and the narrow body B-737-8 on three days.
With the new schedule coming into force from October end, SIA will operate A-350s daily while the B-737-8 will operate five days a week.
Singapore Airlines general manager for India Sy Yen Chen said, the decision was driven by market demand.
“Post Covid-19 we restarted our SIA and Scoot flights but after a year we realised that the market is asking for more. We got a clear signal that the market wants daily wide-body aircraft service and that’s why we decided to take a relook,” Chen said.
He pointed out that another key driver of this decision was the increasing demand for pharma and biotech cargo out of Hyderabad, which wide-body aircraft equipped with temperature control capabilities and the ability to carry large consignments that need skid loading, are better positioned to service.
“We can better serve the global pharma supply chain from Hyderabad through daily wide-body service as we can carry 15,000 kg per flight of cargo on Airbus 350s instead of 2400 kg per flight on narrow body Boeing 737-8 aircraft,” Chen explained.
12/10/2023 Swati Bharadwaj/Times of India
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