Singapore Changi airport expects to build on the recent growth in nonstop services to North America, with Vancouver and Chicago high on the agenda.
Liew Zhong Yao, associate general manger air hub development at Changi, says that the move to twice-daily services by United Airlines on the Singapore San Francisco market has been well received, and gives the airport confidence that there is room for more nonstops to North America.
“Some of the future long-haul markets we are looking at because of all these viable long-haul aircraft technology, hopefully we will see demand in Vancouver to Singapore, so hopefully that will become a reality. Another example is Chicago. These two are some of the lower hanging fruits that we see from the long-haul perspective,” he says.
Cirium schedules data shows that United is the only US operator to fly nonstop from Singapore to North America. Singapore Airlines, meanwhile, flies nonstop to New York-Newark, Los Angeles, San Francisco and, most recently, Seattle.
While acknowledging SIA’s dominance of the nonstops to North America, Liew says that it could be a carrier on either side that could start flights to Vancouver and Chicago.
The airport continues to seek out airlines interested in flying to Singapore from markets including Europe. It has recently attracted LOT Polish Airlines to open services to Warsaw, while also citing the return of Qantas to the Singapore-London route as a major boost to its long-haul network.
Long-hauls aside, Liew also sees opportunity to develop further new routes into China and India, which are likely to be aided by the future introduction of longer-ranging narrowbody jets, such as the Airbus A321LR and XLR.
He adds that although China is feeling the impact of the ongoing trade tensions with the US, it has had little impact on travel to Singapore, and it continues to see “a lot of optimism” from Chinese carriers.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
