Nine more cities get nod for transit flights through Singapore under SIA group

TRAVELLERS from nine new cities, including three South-east Asian countries, will now be allowed to transit through Singapore, the Singapore Airlines (SIA) group announced on Tuesday, in its latest round of approvals.

The three countries are: Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

In Malaysia, flights from Kuala Lumpur under the group - which includes regional arm SilkAir and budget arm Scoot - will be able to transit through Singapore; along with Scoot flights from Ipoh, Kuching and Penang.

In Indonesia, approval was granted for SIA flights departing from Jakarta, SilkAir flights from Medan and Scoot flights from Surabaya.

As for Thailand, SIA can operate such flights from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport.

This adds to the list of transit flights from two other South-east Asian countries - Vietnam and Cambodia - which received approval from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore on Aug 11.

The last city to be approved in the latest round was Tianjin, where Scoot flights from the Chinese city can now transit through the Republic as well.

The SIA group also announced on the same day that SIA and SilkAir have increased the frequency of selected services in their passenger network over the next three months, and reinstated flights to Cebu, Istanbul, Milan, Perth, Phnom Penh and Taipei.

It estimates passenger capacity to reach about 8 per cent of its pre-Covid-19 levels by the end of October this year.