Airlines increase flights between China and Singapore as demand revives

Airlines from home and abroad are increasing their flights between China and Singapore, boosted by fast recovery of the travel market.

Low-cost airline Scoot has resumed routes to the Chinese mainland since the beginning of this year, and has continued to increase its capacity in response to China’s accelerated demand for international travel.

The number of flights has risen from only nine per week in January to 95 per week, Scoot CEO Leslie Thng said on Friday in Beijing.

In addition, as the airline with the largest number of routes connecting Singapore and the Chinese mainland, the carrier has resumed 17 routes to the Chinese mainland, accounting for about a quarter of its current global route network, Thng noted.

Since the beginning of this year, the number of passengers traveling from the Chinese mainland to Singapore has grown from just 2,500 to over 18,000 a week. At the same time, the passenger load factor of Scoot’s flights between the Chinese mainland and Singapore has also continued to grow steadily, according to Scoot.

The passenger load factor reached more than 90 percent during the May Day holidays this year, and even surpassed the level of June 2019.

The company will further expand its route network in China, said Thng, demonstrating its strong confidence in the Chinese market.

With the gradual relaxation of travel restrictions in China and the orderly resumption of international flights, China’s outbound travel market is gradually recovering.

On Thursday, China Eastern Airlines resumed a direct flight from Beijing Daxing International Airport to Singapore. China Eastern Airlines also became the first airline in Singapore to fly to and from Beijing Daxing International Airport. So far, China Eastern Airlines has 66 flights to and from Singapore every week, which has recovered to 87 percent of the pre-epidemic level.

In mid-August, China Eastern Airlines will increase the frequency of Shanghai-Singapore flights every week and add a new route from Hefei in East China’s Anhui Province to Singapore, at which point China Eastern will have 80 flights between Singapore and China every week, exceeding the level of the same period in 2019.

As of June this year, Singapore has resumed flights to 23 cities in China, and the number of cities covered is back to 60 percent of what it was before the pandemic, with passenger traffic also recovering to 60 percent of what it was before the pandemic. In the past six months, the monthly flights between Singapore and China have increased from 160 to nearly 1,200, an increase of 6.5 times, according to zaobao.com.