SINGAPORE Airlines : C6L 0% (SIA) on Monday (Aug 7) said it intends to hike the frequencies of its flight services to key destinations for the operating season starting Mar 31, 2024, to Oct 26, 2024, in anticipation of strong demand for air travel.

The move comes weeks after the national carrier posted a record quarterly performance, with first quarter net profit rising 98.4 per cent to S$734 million.

The national carrier will restore certain flight frequencies to pre-pandemic levels or exceed them, it said in a press statement. These include Beijing and Shanghai in China; Ahmedabad in India; as well as Darwin, Melbourne, and Perth in Australia, among others.

It will also deploy widebody aircraft on some of its medium- and long-haul flights, increasing flight capacity. These include certain flights to Perth, Beijing, Shanghai and Ahmedabad, to name a few.

SIA will also upgauge the aircraft on its Singapore and Cairns flight service to the larger A350-900 medium-haul aircraft from the Boeing 737-8 narrowbody, and cut the current five-times weekly service to four times a week instead from Mar 31, 2024.

From May 1, 2024, SIA intends to add a third daily service between Singapore and Beijing, bringing flight frequencies back to three times daily, from two times at present. 

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The group will also add a fourth daily service to Shanghai from Oct 1 this year, followed by a fifth from Mar 31, 2024.

A fifth daily service to Hong Kong will be added from Oct 29, 2023, and a sixth from Aug 1, 2024, in line with pre-pandemic levels. 

The frequency of services to Ahmedabad, the largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat, will be restored to a daily frequency from Sep 2, 2024, up from five times weekly.

Flights to Australian cities Darwin, Melbourne, and Perth will climb to pre-pandemic levels.  Darwin flights will step up to a daily service up from five times weekly from Mar 31, 2024; flights to Melbourne will reach five times daily from May 26, 2024; while services to Perth will increase to four times daily from Mar 31, 2024.

Within South-east Asia, SIA will ramp up services to Kuala Lumpur to 66 times a week between Mar 31, 2024, and Oct 26, 2024, up from the current 47 times. 

Flight services to Yangon, Myanmar, will go up from Aug 2, 2024, to 10 times weekly from the current three with the Boeing 737-8 aircraft.

SIA will be introducing daily flights to Da Nang, Vietnam, up from three times weekly, returning flight frequencies to 14 times weekly.

For Japan, a third daily service to Haneda, Tokyo, will be added from Oct 1, 2023, followed by a fourth from Sep 1, 2024, reaching the pre-pandemic levels of four times daily. 

SIA will restore its flights to Seattle in the US to four times weekly starting May 28, 2024, up from three times currently.

SIA’s flagship Airbus A380 will return to continental Europe on Mar 31, 2024. It replaces the A350-900 long-haul aircraft, which currently operates the daily service to Frankfurt.

In its results released on Jul 27, the airline attributed its record net profit for the three months ended June to better operating performance, a net interest income versus a net finance charge last year, and a share of profits versus a share of losses of associated companies last year. These partly offset this year’s higher tax expense.

The quarterly record came after SIA posted a full-year net profit of S$2.2 billion in its 76-year history for the previous financial year.

SIA also expanded its group passenger capacity by 32.4 per cent year on year, amid easing global restrictions on international air travel. Notably, SIA and Scoot saw a 65.6 per cent rise in passengers during the quarter compared to the year before.

Its counter was trading 0.3 per cent or S$0.02 higher at S$7.14 as at 2.12 pm.