Low-cost Singaporean carrier Scoot has blamed a combination of aircraft resource problems related to the Boeing 737 MAX groundings and weak demand for a decision to cancel flights to four cities.
The airline will cancel flights between Singapore and Lucknow in India from June 29 and between Singapore and Kalibo in the Philippines the next day.
Flights between Singapore and Quanzhou in China will end August 24 and between Singapore and Male in the Maldives from August 25.
“Scoot has decided to suspend services to these four cities due to a combination of weak demand and a shortage of aircraft resources,’’ the airline said in a statement.
“The aircraft shortage is arising as SilkAir, due to the grounding of its Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet, will no longer transfer its Boeing 737-800NG aircraft to Scoot in the financial year 2019/2020, as originally announced in November 2018.
“However, Scoot will continue to undertake the routes that SilkAir had earlier committed to transfer over.”
READ: Scoot scotches Hawaii in route reshuffle.
The canceled routes are all currently operated by Airbus A320 aircraft and none are daily.
The airline is offering affected travelers a 100 percent refund or a 120 percent refund via a Scoot travel voucher.
Alternatively, there will be no additional charges for customers with existing bookings who bring forward their booking to the same destination before the planned suspension date or who rebook to other Scoot destinations within the same country within seven days of the original departure date.
SilkAir had committed to transfer 17 destinations to Scoot as part of a Singapore Airlines restructure that will see it merge with the mainline airline.
SIA announced in 2018 that it will fit SilkAir aircraft with lie-flat business seats and add an inflight entertainment system in all cabins as part of the merger with the parent airline.
Subject to regulatory approvals, the routes being transferred to Scoot are:
- Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos, in April 2019
- Coimbatore, Trivandrum and Visakhapatnam in India, between May 2019 and October 2019
- Changsha, Fuzhou, Kunming and Wuhan in China, between May 2019 and June 2019
- Chiang Mai in Thailand, in October 2019
- Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia, in December 2019
- Balikpapan, Lombok, Makassar, Manado, Semarang and Yogyakarta in Indonesia, between May 2020 and July 2020
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