First SIA flight carrying vaccinated travellers from Germany to land on Wednesday

[SINGAPORE] A pilot travel scheme to allow vaccinated travellers to enter Singapore without quarantine will take off as planned on Wednesday.

The first flight under the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL), SQ325, is expected to depart Frankfurt in Germany at 10pm local time on Tuesday, and land at Changi Airport at 4.25pm on Wednesday.

Vaccinated travellers from these two countries will go through up to four Covid-19 polymerase chain reaction tests in lieu of quarantine, and have to adhere to other conditions such as taking designated VTL flights to Singapore.

Singapore unilaterally opened the VTL to travellers from Brunei and Germany as a start.

Brunei remains closed to leisure travel, but as Germany has been open to travellers from the Republic since October last year, it means Singapore residents can use the VTL scheme to travel without quarantine in either country.

Singapore Airlines (SIA), which will operate three VTL flights weekly from Frankfurt and two VTL flights weekly from Munich, told The Straits Times it has seen an increase in bookings. It declined to give further details, which it said were commercially sensitive.

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Both business- and economy-class tickets for the first VTL flight from Frankfurt to Singapore were still available when ST checked the SIA website on Tuesday afternoon.

German carrier Lufthansa will also offer two VTL flights weekly from Frankfurt to Singapore, starting Sept 16.

Travel booking platform Expedia said it has seen almost a 10-fold increase in Singapore residents looking for flights to Munich and Frankfurt, following the announcement of the VTL.

But prices for the flights have remained stable, said Lavinia Rajaram, head of communications for Expedia in the Asia-Pacific. She said they could rise if demand grows towards the year-end holidays. In anticipation of growing demand for overseas travel, some travel agents have started working on tour packages to Germany.

Travel agent Chan Brother Travel said it has launched an 11-day tour for travel under the VTL scheme, with precautions such as a reduced tour group size of 20 travellers.

Expedia's Ms Rajaram said, however, that demand for travel to Singapore from Germany has not picked up. "This is an indication that German travellers may not be prepared for long-haul travel, after just concluding their summer travels," she said.

The Singapore Tourism Board said that there were 381,000 visitor arrivals from Germany in 2019 - the 15th-largest source of arrivals.

Independent aviation analyst Brendan Sobie from Sobie Aviation said he did not expect the VTL to generate a significant volume of inbound traffic. This is because of factors such as more attractive tourism options for Germany residents and Brunei's borders being largely closed.

Noting that there will be just 10 VTL flights weekly from Germany and Brunei, Mr Sobie said: "It's not going to move the needle in terms of traffic. "It's a step in the right direction, but not significant and not sufficient enough to start a recovery of the Singapore aviation and travel sectors."

THE STRAITS TIMES