Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Air travel bubbles remain important for Singapore, but are not so easy to achieve

It has been nearly a year since air travel bubbles have been under consideration in the Asia Pacific and about eight months since discussions began in Singapore.

Bubbles offer an important platform to facilitate a partial and earlier resumption of air travel.

Bubbles offer an important platform to facilitate a partial and earlier resumption of air travel.

Follow TODAY on WhatsApp

It has been nearly a year since air travel bubbles have been under consideration in the Asia Pacific and about eight months since discussions began in Singapore.

So far travel bubbles have been extremely difficult to agree upon and implement.

Singapore and Hong Kong agreed in October to establish Asia’s first air travel bubble but it was postponed just a day prior to the original Nov 22, 2020 start date due to a new wave of cases in Hong Kong and remains suspended.

It was not until April 1 that Asia’s first air travel bubble was implemented, connecting the tiny Pacific island country of Palau and Taiwan with a relatively insignificant two weekly flights.

Of much more significance, Australia and New Zealand are finally planning to implement quarantine-free two-way travel on April 19, following 11 months of off-and-on talks.

It is not technically a bubble but simply a reopening of the border as there is no specific agreement between the two countries or limits on the number of flights or travellers.

Australia initially opened its border to New Zealand in October 2020, allowing one-way quarantine free travel and New Zealand decided earlier this month to open its border with Australia, enabling quarantine free travel in both directions.

Just like any bubble, the Australia-New Zealand reopening is fragile as the border can quickly close, potentially even before the arrangement starts, if there are new community cases in either country.

The Australia-New Zealand opening is particularly fragile as both countries have Covid-19 elimination rather than containment strategies that have several times resulted in snap lockdowns in cities or states even if there is just one case.

Unfortunately for Singapore and other Asian countries that have effective containment strategies, this makes travel bubbles with Australia or New Zealand extremely difficult – if not impossible — to implement.

Australia and New Zealand have been at or near the top of Singapore’s bubble wish list for several months but Singapore will now have to wait at least a few more months as Australia and New Zealand focus first on their own arrangement.

Other bubbles for Singapore are more feasible in the near term if they are with countries that have similar Covid-19 containment strategies.

However, aligning any two countries has so far proven extremely difficult due to new waves of cases, which result in one country typically having better containment than another at any particular point of time, as well as political issues.

Singapore and Hong Kong were perfectly aligned when their air travel bubble agreement was initially forged in October 2020. At the time they had a similar small number of community cases as well as similar strategies for containing the virus and starting the reopening process.

But the new wave in Hong Kong that started in November 2020 meant there was no longer an alignment in terms of cases.

Had the bubble been implemented as originally planned a suspension would have been triggered in the first week due to the requirement of maintaining a seven-day average of fewer than five unlinked community cases.

This is no longer an issue as the number of community cases in Hong Kong has been low again for the last two months but Singapore and Hong Kong are no longer aligned in other ways.

Hong Kong has become more conservative with its approach to containing Covid-19. For example in February, it implemented an extraordinary requirement for local air crew to quarantine when returning to Hong Kong that has yet to be matched by any country.

Hong Kong is now proposing a vaccination requirement for travellers from the city in the proposed air travel bubble, which Singapore does not require. This could cause a further delay in starting the bubble.

Vaccines can potentially help facilitate bubbles but this is not necessary as is evident with the Palau-Taiwan and Australia-New Zealand examples, which do not require travellers to be inoculated.

Eventually, Singapore is expected to pursue a broad reopening, permitting vaccinated visitors to enter and any vaccinated Singapore resident to return without quarantine.

This could potentially supersede the need for air travel bubble agreements, which typically involve additional requirements such as a limit on the number of flights, with countries that are on any green list, although it is possible bubbles could still be used on a supplementary basis for some countries.

In the first phase, the broader reopening may include only countries that have high vaccination rates and or low case numbers as well as digital health passports, which are needed to ensure authentic vaccination certificates and test results.

It is hard to put a timeline on when this may happen, so in the meantime, bubbles offer an important platform to facilitate a partial and earlier resumption of air travel.

There could still be several bubbles before the broader reopening starts, enabling a pickup in passenger traffic and visitor numbers from the miniscule figures that Singapore has been reporting since April 2020.

Indeed, several of the over dozen bubbles which have been proposed over the last several months could still be potentially implemented by the end of the current quarter.

Maldives, which I suggested should be Singapore’s first air travel bubble in this August 2020 commentary in TODAY, remains feasible.

According to travel news website Web in Travel, an industry led proposal for a Maldives-Singapore bubble was submitted in October but reportedly “did not gain traction” with the Singapore authorities — “presumably because it was seen as too elitist, or too one-way”.

The proposal “remains stalled”, Web in Travel reported in March.

While Maldives has been open to all visitors since July 2020 without quarantine, an air travel bubble with Singapore is needed so that Singapore residents do not have to quarantine when returning home.

Under the proposed bubble, resorts would be dedicated to Singapore guests, who would travel to the Maldives on dedicated flights and be transferred to the resorts on dedicated boats.

This minimises any concerns of mixing with visitors from other countries, particularly given Maldives’ unique position of having a separate island for each resort.

Qatar successfully implemented the same concept, resulting in more than 3,000 Qatari residents travelling to the Maldives on 70 dedicated flights and staying at three dedicated resorts between November 2020 and February 2021 under the Qatar Airways “bubble holidays” programme.

While vaccination was not initially part of the Singapore-Maldives bubble proposal as it predated vaccines, staff at the proposed dedicated resorts have now been inoculated, providing an additional layer of safety.

A similar industry-led proposal for a Singapore-Bintan bubble also has been under consideration for several months, offering dedicated resorts in Bintan, where staff have now been vaccinated, as well as dedicated ferries from Singapore.

A combination of the Bintan and Maldives bubbles is ideal as it would cater to different segments of the market with Bintan providing a much lower cost option than Maldives, which can be seen as “elitist” given its high price point.

While neither the Bintan nor Maldives bubbles would generate inbound visitors for Singapore’s battered tourism industry, other bubbles that are possible in the near term such as Brunei are inbound focused.

Bubbles with Taiwan and Vietnam, which would generate significant business for Singapore’s tourism industry as well being popular with Singapore residents, are also possible.

But Singapore should not wait for Taiwan, Vietnam or other large potential bubbles before moving forward with smaller bubbles if they are ready to be implemented now.

Singapore initially focused on Hong Kong as the first bubble as it provided an even mix of inbound and outbound while catering to a wide range of travellers.

The idea was to follow Hong Kong with other bubbles that were placed on the backburner in October and November as Singapore focused on Hong Kong rather than approve multiple bubbles.

Bubble talks subsequently slowed down due to new Covid-19 strains and a spike in cases in several countries but over the last month or two, bubble talks with several countries have resumed and Singapore is again ready to move forward, generally speaking.

However, alignment is still a challenge with Singapore not yet ready for some countries or destinations that are keen but ready for countries or destinations that are not keen or ready themselves.

The politics behind bubbles is also tricky and constantly changing.

There are many balls in the air at the moment. We just have to hope that one finally lands — and hopefully several will.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Brendan Sobie is the founder of Singapore-based independent aviation consulting and analysis firm Sobie Aviation. He was previously chief analyst for CAPA- Centre for Aviation.

Related topics

Travel tourism travel bubble Covid-19

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.