SINGAPORE — Singapore Airlines (SIA) flights to the Chinese cities of Chongqing, Chengdu and Xiamen will resume from April 22 after a three-week suspension.

The suspension, from March 31 to April 21, was due to “regulatory reasons”, an SIA spokesperson said on Monday (April 1) without providing further details.

Before the pause in flights, SIA operated daily services to Chengdu and Xiamen, and flew three times a week to Chongqing.

When flights to the three cities resume, services will begin with five times weekly flights from April 22 to April 28. Thereafter, it will be increased to daily services, the airline said in response to CNA’s queries.

POSSIBLE REASONS FOR DISRUPTION

The period of suspension follows a similar situation last year when SIA flights to five cities, including Chengdu, Chongqing and Xiamen were halted. Services to those three cities resumed on Nov 26 last year.

Aviation analysts CNA spoke to suggested a few reasons for service disruptions, including capacity limits and the unavailability of flight slots.

Independent analyst Brendan Sobie said that the suspension might be because the carrier had not managed to obtain approval in time for the summer season, which runs from end-March to end-October.

The analyst who founded aviation consultancy Sobie Aviation noted that the now-defunct SilkAir — which merged with SIA in 2021 — previously had the rights and slots to the affected routes, but that the slots could not simply be transferred to SIA. 

“You need regulatory approvals from all countries to do these kinds of transfers. Different countries have different rules about this but China essentially requires a new application and doesn't automatically approve any transfer of slots or rights from one airline to another,” he said. 

As a result, SIA has had to obtain approvals from Chinese authorities. It managed to do so belatedly for the winter season last year, which runs from end-October to end-March. At that time, SIA did not sell seats on the affected routes beyond end-March, Mr Sobie stressed, adding that the regulatory issue had been going on “for a long time”. 

According to Mr Sobie, slot approvals are not necessarily permanent. 

“The old SilkAir slots were permanent but are now lost. So SIA Group has to try to get permanent slots for both summer and winter across all the former SilkAir routes.”

China is not the only authority to disallow the transfer of slots. Changi Airport practises a similar policy, Mr Sobie pointed out. 

“So to transfer you need to reapply, and you are essentially at the back of the queue. Many airports don’t have available slots so it’s not easy unless you want to operate at really off-peak times like 2am,” said Mr Sobie. 

Agreeing with Mr Sobie’s assessment, transport analyst Terence Fan from the Singapore Management University (SMU) said that scheduled air passenger traffic in and out of China comes with more constraints compared to that of many other countries. 

This is partly due to the heavy impact on China’s aviation sector during the pandemic, leading to China prioritising the recovery of its local airlines. 

He said that in particular, airlines in the US have not been able to reinstate their pre-pandemic capacities as they had wished, and have had to adjust to new restrictions. 

Such new restrictions include allowing a reduction in the number of destinations an airline can fly to, as well as the frequency of flights. 

“It would not surprise me that Singapore is also subjected to a similar set of restrictions,” said Asst Prof Fan. “If this is the case, Singapore would have to juggle which cities it would need to serve in order to stay within the capacity limit that is updated periodically.” 

But the suspension of flights may not only be due to reasons arising from China. It could be a decision by local airlines as well.

Asst Prof Fan said that runway slots at desirable times are difficult to obtain all over the world, not just China.

“It is possible that SIA might be prioritising more rapid service resumptions to China’s busiest airports such as at Beijing and Shanghai to secure their runway slots at the most desirable times, at the expense of service to places like Chongqing and Chengdu,” he said. 

“Hence, these services are suspended due to ‘regulatory’ reasons.” 

Checks of SIA’s website showed that return flights to Chongqing are available from end-April until end-October, while those between Singapore and Chengdu are available from end-April to end-May. SIA flights operating between Singapore and Xiamen are also available from end-April to end-May. 

Asked when flights to the three cities will run until, a spokesperson replied that the airline "will update its schedules at the appropriate time".

"We will continue to work closely with the relevant authorities as we adjust our network and capacity to China," the spokesperson added. 

According to SIA's website, for the week of April 1 to April 7, the airline still offers a total of 70 flights from Singapore to four cities in mainland China — 35 to Shanghai, 14 to Beijing, 14 to Guangzhou and seven to Shenzhen. CNA