Singapore Airlines takes on Emirates in Adelaide
It speaks loudly about the failure of Qantas act competitively on overseas routes that Singapore Airlines has today moved to reassert its lead over Emirates as Australia’s largest foreign flag carrier in confirming its plans for a large expansion of its flights between Adelaide and its Changi Airport hub for connections to the rest of the world.
In a statement, which trails its own leaks to the media by several days, it tabulates its Australian operations as follows.
Singapore Airlines is Australia’s largest foreign carrier and will operate 105 weekly services, as of 2 July, from the following cities:
Adelaide – ten flights weekly operated with Airbus A330 aircraft
Brisbane – three flights daily with Airbus A330 aircraft
Melbourne – three flights daily with Airbus A380/Boeing 777-300ER/Boeing 777-300 aircraft
Perth – three flights daily with Airbus A330/Boeing 777-200/Boeing 777-300 aircraft
Sydney – four flights daily with Airbus A380/Airbus A330/Boeing 777-300 aircraft
Darwin – four flights weekly with Airbus A319/Airbus A320 aircraft, operated by SilkAir, the regional wing of Singapore Airlines
In 2012, Singapore Airlines celebrates 45 years of service to Australia and the fifth anniversary of the first A380 flight, as well as further capacity increases by growing from 95 weekly services to 112 by the end of the year.
This is not about Qantas. It is about Singapore Airport versus Dubai Airport, following the public musing by Emirates about nothing more than the possibility it might put a daily 777 into Adelaide operations.
It remains to be seen whether Singapore Airlines succeeds in intimidating Emirates into staying out of Adelaide. I wouldn’t bet on this proving to be the case.
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No doubt that Qantas will just sit on the sidelines and watch as Singapore Airlines takes away yet more of their market share from the Adelaide market.
Then again, it will be yet another excuse for Joyce to blame the International division for making a loss and subsequently having to slash more jobs and routes and orders for new aircraft.
by Concorde on Jun 28, 2012 at 11:16 am
This does not include the new 4th daily PER service which will start in October. The new PER and ADL services time well to connect with the new 4th daily LHR service to start in late September.
Also the 12x weekly Scoot 777s to the Gold Coast and Sydney means that the SIA Group will have 124 flights a week to Australia by November this year.
It’s nice to see SQ being so aggressive after nearly a decade of being so passive and dormant. One hopes it’s not too little too late.
But with a competitor like QF who doesn’t even try, I guess it’s not hard to try and beat them. Will QF still languish at 3 weekly SINADL?
by The Doc on Jun 28, 2012 at 3:46 pm
SQ & Scoot should market all Jetstar Intl ports departing Australia.
by TN Kangaroo (Blue Tail) on Jun 28, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Also note SQ is struggling profit-wise as much if not more than QF. Direct flights is not the only and best solutions. There are an awful lot of 2 stop Asian flights to all sorts of places still and that includes CX (eg. I was on one to Pakistan via BKK), and Emirates: everybody’s poster stars.
by patrick kilby on Jun 28, 2012 at 10:27 pm
Being an Adelaidean, I would obviously welcome SQ (or any other airlines) decision to increase international flights. I would interest to know how does Singapore Air view ADL’s future with respect to Scoot? Would they be able to add ADL into the next destination list without cannibalise SQ’s loading?
It is also interesting to see the time slot used by SQ for those additional 3 flights – for those who are not familiar with Adelaide Airport, it’s international gates are for part-time use and it can be reversed (on daily basis) to use as domestic gates on the times when there’s no international flight. The timing for those 3 additional flights are virtually the only international flight on that part of the day – that means there’s at least one less domestic gate would be available as a result. I do hope ADL won’t run out of domestic gates too soon…
by TT on Jun 28, 2012 at 11:54 pm
Interesting moves by SQ. One advantage they have over the ME carriers is the well earned and established reputation of Changi. I believe it to still be the best airport in the world…it works!
by ltfisher on Jun 29, 2012 at 8:45 am
The main advantage SIA has over Middle East carriers out of Australia is that SIA can take Australians anywhere in the world except the US (except for Perth pax, where PER-SIN-USA Is not that much of a detour) whereas Middle East carriers can only take Australians anywhere west of the UAE or Qatar.
So even if SQ loses Europe-bound pax to QR, EK and EY, they can still fill their Australia planes with pax who go to Mumbai, Bangkok, Nagoya and Taipei.
by The Doc on Jun 29, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Another advantage of Singapore is that it’s much less of a detour on routes to northern Europe (except from WA). But many people do prefer to fly EK, and some will do so even if the route’s significantly longer. Not Bangkok, Nagoya or Taipei, but certainly Mumbai. And Singapore isn’t practical for African destinatiins.
by Aidan Stanger on Jun 29, 2012 at 8:07 pm