Scoot wants more Indian airports to be included in India-Singapore air services agreement | Business News
Singapore Airlines group’s low-cost airline Scoot is excited about the market potential in tier two and three cities in India and hopes that the bilateral air services agreement between India and Singapore will be expanded to allow direct flights between the city state and more Indian cities.
With rapid growth in air travel in India and a large number of Indians now travelling overseas, a number of markets in the country have significant growth potential from Scoot’s perspective but are not part of the India-Singapore air services agreement, said Brian Torrey, General Manager – India and West Asia at Scoot.
Torrey did not list any of these high-potential Indian airports or markets that currently do not have direct connectivity with Singapore. He said that as India builds more airports in the near future, “hopefully” there will be changes in the air services agreement to include more airports.
The current bilateral air services agreement between India and Singapore allows for connectivity between the city state and 24 Indian cities, which include the six major Indian metropolitan cities and 18 other cities. Torrey added that while Scoot and Singapore Airlines have the expansion of bilateral rights in their wishlist, the decision rests with the governments of the two countries.
Scoot and Singapore Airlines currently operate flights to a total of 13 cities in India. Scoot operates over 40 weekly flights from Singapore to six Indian cities—Chennai, Amritsar, Tiruchirappalli, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram, and Visakhapatnam. Parent Singapore Airlines, which is a full-service carrier, operates flights to the major Indian metros and a few other cities.Torrey said that Scoot is constantly evaluating network expansion opportunities in India, but there is no plan to launch a new service in the immediate-to-near term.
India is among the top four markets for Scoot, in addition to Singapore, China, and Australia. According to senior executives at Scoot, the India’s fast-growing middle class is a key market segment for the airline as a growing number of upwardly mobile Indians are now travelling to overseas destinations.
Apart from being a popular destination among Indians, Singapore also serves as a major international hub with significant volumes of transfer traffic to other international markets. According to estimates, around 40 per cent of Scoot’s passenger traffic from India is connecting traffic to destinations beyond Singapore. These include popular destinations in Southeast Asia, China, and Australia.
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The connecting traffic from India to other destinations via Singapore has grown significantly for Scoot in the post-pandemic period and the airline is working to provide better connectivity to more destinations via Singapore to Indian travellers, Torrey said.
Scoot’s parent Singapore Airlines, which holds a 49 per cent stake in Vistara, will eventually have a 25.1 per cent stake in Air India after the completion of the Vistara’s merger into Air India. Torrey, however, refrained from commenting on what the Singapore Airlines’s stake in Air India might mean for Scoot and its parent airline in terms of possible network and operational synergies between the two airline groups.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
