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Singapore Airlines will be the first to fly the Airbus A380 to India. The A380 will start flying to India from May 30, about seven years after the aircraft made its entry into commercial service.
This follows the Centre relaxing a ban on super-jumbo aircraft operations.
Daily, Singapore Airlines will fly the A380 to Mumbai and New Delhi, replacing smaller Boeing 777s. Another daily flight will, however, continue to be operated through B777s. Overall, 14 flights will serve each city every week. With the Airbus A380, the airline will save on operating costs and the move will also see some capacity reduction on the route.
Overall, Singapore Airlines and its regional airline, Silk Air, fly 107 flights to India a week.
Currently the airline flies a mix of Boeing 777-200 and Boeing 777-300 to Mumbai and Delhi, with 266-284 seats in two- and three-class configurations. The airline is clubbing two Boeing 777-300 operated flights (eight first class, 42/50 business class and 226/228 economy seats) with an Airbus A380 flight. The Airbus A380 can seat 471 passengers in three-class configuration (12 first-class suites, 60 business class and 399 economy class seats). The A380 also has 30-inch-wide business-class seats.
Singapore Airlines has 19 Airbus A380s in its fleet and five more have been ordered. The airline will pull out two A380s from its current network to introduce those on Indian routes. “We have been keen to operate the Airbus A380 to India and are glad the air services agreement between Singapore and India now allows us to do so,” said Singapore Airlines Senior Vice-President (marketing planning) Lee Wen Fen. “India is a particularly important market for Singapore Airlines and we are very pleased more of our customers will soon be able to experience the spaciousness and comfort of the world’s largest aircraft.”
David Lau, general manager (India),said, “Singapore Airlines was the first airline to operate the A380. The Singapore Airlines A380 not only has immense public appeal, but also showcases our commitment to offer the best in-flight experience to our Indian travellers.”
The Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore airports had the infrastructure to handle A380 flights, the civil aviation ministry had said, while revoking the ban on these flights. In March, the governments of India and Singapore had revised the air services agreements to enable Singapore carriers to fly the A380 here.
The Mumbai and Delhi airports have welcomed the Singapore Airlines announcement, saying this was demonstration of world-class facilities at the airports.
Planning for A380 operations will include ramping up the airline-catering equipment in India. Currently, Taj Sats, which supplies meals to Singapore Airlines in India, doesn’t have an A380-compliant hi-lift, used to load food trolleys into the aircraft.
Taj Sats will either have to lease or purchase it from other companies or carry double the number of meals from Singapore for the return trip.
Other foreign airlines, including Emirates and Lufthansa, have also shown interest to fly the A380 to India. Emirates, the largest operator of A380, had brought the super jumbo for demonstration at Hyderabad, indicating its keenness to expand capacity to India. In February, India and Dubai had increased traffic rights between them by 11,000 seats.
A senior Emirates executive said the airline was considering adding 30,000 seats to India, which would enable the airline to introduce Airbus A380s and, on a few routes, replace the Airbus A330s with Boeing 777s. The airline will phase out its Airbus A330s and A340s through the next two years. Currently, it flies 185 flights to India every week.
A380 — FACTS AND FIGURES
- 124 A380s have been delivered to 10 operators
- Four new customers will operate A380s from 2014 : Skymark, Asiana, Qatar and Etihad
- Total orders for A380 stand at 324 from 20 customers
- A380 first entered into commercial service with SIA in October 2007
- Worldwide, some 170 flights are performed each day by A380s and 2 million passengers fly by A380s each month
- An A380 takes off or lands every five minutes. It operates at 35 airports
- Shortest A380 route - Bangkok-Hong Kong (1687 km) is operated by Emirates
- Longst A380 route - Los Angeles-Melbourne (12751 km) is operated by Qantas
