Singapore Airlines retains core flights

[Gerald A]

PLANS by Singapore Airlines to cut capacity by 11 per cent and to reduce its fleet by 17 aircraft because of the global economic downturn will not affect Australia greatly, according to the airline.

A spokesman said the carrier was still finalising details of how the reduction would affect specific routes but core flights to Australia were expected to remain intact.

He expected cuts to be limited largely to already announced reductions of flights to Perth, Sydney and Brisbane.

The airline is talking to unions about ways of offsetting a sharp drop in passenger and cargo demand.

The carrier, which had originally planned to phase out four aircraft in the next financial year, reported last week a 43 per cent fall in third-quarter profit to $S337 million ($343 million), as passenger numbers fell 4.2 per cent and freight slumped by 14.2per cent.




http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25079308-23349,00.html

[Andrew P]

can someone please explain the difference between a core and a non-core flight?

I thought all flights on SQ were the same!!

Banjo

[Steve Jones]

Just like core and non-core promises no doubt

[Simon L.]

can someone please explain the difference between a core and a non-core flight?

I thought all flights on SQ were the same!!

Banjo

I think the wordings are somewhat "confusing".

Nevertheless, I was told by several SQ staff here in Australia, SIN & China that SQ will try to reduce frequencies on existing routes at first (unless LFs and yields are shockingly poor on a particular route) and if this doesn't work they will then be considering on suspending the route. They won't exit a market so easily as what some other carriers are doing as they simply don't want to give up the local presence and leave the hardly-earned market shares to its rivals.

So, my personal impression (could be totally wrong anyway) with the "core" and "non-core" is that they may look at LFs and yields for all flights on the existing routes applicable and pick 1-2 best-performing services on each route so that these will be the "core" while the rest will first come under "the chopping block waitlist" and be treated like "non-core". However, this will probably affect cities with multi-flights offered by SQ more than those with only one existing service. For instance, SQ's SIN-ADL services will probably highly unlikely to be suspended at all even if the market conditions aren't performing well (although frequency cuts may be expected if market demand goes down dramatically) since there is only one daily service to ADL and that may be considered as a "core service" by SQ.

Regards.

[Grahame Hutchison]

Core routes are the ones where they have large passenger volumes and good profit returns (or no competition), ie.

C - Can
O - Openly
R - Ripoff
E - Everyone

[Mike W]

Core routes are the ones where they have large passenger volumes and good profit returns (or no competition), ie.

C - Can
O - Openly
R - Ripoff
E - Everyone

What QF have (Temporarily now) on their US routes :D

[Michael Cleary]

reduce its fleet by 17 aircraft

The end of SQ 744's perhaps?

[Nick C]

The end of SQ 744's perhaps?

Yes. All the 744s will be gone by end of FY09/10.