SCOOT BANKS ON KL-SINGAPORE ROUTE
Sector’s travellers are important feeder traffic, says chief commercial officer
COOT, the low-cost arm of Singapore Airlines Group, sees the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore sector as its busiest international route for the next two years.
Chief commercial officer Vinod Kannan said Scoot currently operated 22 return flights weekly between the two cities, which frequently had load factors of above 80 per cent.
“With so many new routes in the pipeline, travellers in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore will continue to serve as important feeder traffic to our medium- to long-haul destinations,” he told NST Business recently.
The airline also flies to Penang, Ipoh, Langkawi, Kuching and Kuantan.
It will commence daily Kota Kinabalu-Singapore flights in December.
On AirAsia’s dominance over regional destinations, Vinod said every low-cost carrier had its own strengths.
“At Scoot, our focus is to fulfil the needs of passengers and that includes offering them better connectivity at attractive rates. Together with our parent, Singapore Airlines, we offer an unbeatable permutation of travel itineraries through our hub in Singapore, made all the more attractive now that Scoot participates directly in the group’s KrisFlyer frequent flyer and loyalty programme.”
Vinod said Scoot had an aggressive growth plan to double the size of its fleet in five years.
“With more planes to come, you can surely expect new, exciting destinations.”
Vinod said the group recently announced the transfer of 17 SilkAir destinations to Scoot to better meet the demand for lowcost travel in Southeast Asia.
SilkAir is the regional wing of Singapore Airlines.
The destinations are Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos, Coimbatore, Trivandrum and Visakhapatnam in India, Changsha, Fuzhou, Kunming and Wuhan in China, Balikpapan, Lombok, Makassar, Manado, Semarang and Yogyakarta in Indonesia, Chiang Mai in Thailand and Kota Kinabalu.
“These are the routes we can look forward to having by next year. When all these routes come on line, Scoot’s network will grow to 77 destinations in 18 countries.
“I foresee that Scoot will focus on launching these regional operations. As for long-haul destinations, we will continue to strengthen the demand for our Athens and Berlin routes before looking at more options,” said Vinod.
To date, the airline has carried more than 60 million passengers.
Scoot has a mixed fleet of 18 widebody Boeing 787 Dreamliners and 29 modern Airbus A320family aircraft. It has ordered two more Boeing 787 Dreamliners and 37 Airbus A320neo aircraft.
Scoot will also take over SilkAir’s fleet of 14 Boeing 737800s.
Vinod said Asia remained Scoot’s core region by providing connecting traffic feed through its Singapore hub to long-haul destinations.