Singapore Airlines will later this month resume services to and from three mainland Chinese cities after receiving regulatory approval to do so.
According to CNA, flights to Chongqing, Chengdu and Xiamen – recently paused for three weeks because the airline had not yet received necessary approvals from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) – will resume from 22 April, initially with five flights to and from each city per week before increasing to daily services by the end of the month.
This is the second time in 12 months that Singapore Airlines has been forced to suspend flights to China for regulatory reasons.
Although officials have not released any official reasons for the suspensions, CNA cited aviation analyst Brendan Sobie who believes they relate to the 2021 acquisition by Singapore Airlines of SilkAir, which previously held the rights and slots to the affected routes.
“You need regulatory approvals from all countries to do these kinds of transfers [of flight routes],” Sobie said.
“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.
“The old SilkAir slots were permanent but are now lost, so Singapore Airlines Group has to try to get permanent slots for both summer and winter across all the former SilkAir routes.
“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.”
The most recent flight suspension comes after China’s embassy in Singapore issued an advisory warning its citizens against gambling there because doing so could violate Chinese law.
The two nations previously launched a mutual 30-day visa free entry scheme in early February, which Nomura analysts said would trigger a significant increase in Chinese travellers to Singapore and provide additional benefits to its two integrated resorts, Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa.
Singapore Airlines currently operates 70 weekly flights to and from mainland China, of which 35 are Shanghai, 14 to Beijing, 14 to Guangzhou and seven to Shenzhen.
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