Scoot to cancel flights to four cities due to weak demand, aircraft shortage

SINGAPORE — Scoot will be suspending services to four cities from late June onwards, due to both weak demand and a shortage of aircraft.

The four cities are Lucknow, India; Kalibo, the Philippines; Quanzhou, China; and Male, Maldives, said Scoot in a media release on Monday (April 29).

The low-cost airline of the Singapore Airlines Group now serves Lucknow, Kalibo and Quanzhou three times weekly, and Male four times weekly.

The last flights between Singapore and these cities are on June 29 (Lucknow), June 30 (Kalibo), Aug 24 (Quanzhou) and Oct 25 (Male).

“Scoot has decided to suspend services to these four cities due to a combination of weak demand and a shortage of aircraft resources,” the airline said.

“The aircraft shortage is arising as SilkAir, due to the grounding of its Boeing 737 Max 8 fleet, will no longer transfer its Boeing 737-800NG aircraft to Scoot in the financial year 2019/2020, as originally announced in November 2018.”

It added that it has contacted affected customers and offered them various options, which included changing their flights to either before the planned suspension date or to another destination at no extra charge, or getting a full refund.

The transfer of aircraft from SilkAir to Scoot was aimed at allowing the budget carrier to compete more effectively against low-cost rivals in the region such as the AirAsia Group.

However, on March 12 this year, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) said that it was temporarily suspending operation of all variants of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft into and out of Singapore.  

The move came after a Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed in Ethiopia on March 10, killing all 157 on board. Just six months before that in October, a 737 Max 8 operated by Lion Air crashed into the Java Sea, killing 189.

In a statement, SilkAir confirmed that as of March 12, all six of its Boeing 737 Max aircraft have been grounded in Singapore and will not be returned to service until further notice. Its 17 Boeing 737-800NGs are not affected, it added.

ROUTES FROM EARLIER COMMITMENT

Despite the suspension of services to the four cities, Scoot said that, subject to regulatory approval, it will continue to undertake the 17 routes that SilkAir had earlier committed to transfer over in November last year.

These routes are:

• Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos, in April 2019

• Coimbatore, Trivandrum and Visakhapatnam in India, between May and October 2019

• Changsha, Fuzhou, Kunming and Wuhan in China, between May and June 2019

• Chiang Mai in Thailand, in October 2019

• Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia, in December 2019

• Balikpapan, Lombok, Makassar, Manado, Semarang and Yogyakarta in Indonesia, between May 2020 and July 2020