A couple of months back, a long standing decision of the Indian government to not allow the Airbus A380 planes in India was changed. As of end January, various carriers from around the globe were free to launch their A380 services to India. This was something I had also put out in my post on the predictions for Indian Aviation in 2014.
While it has been expected that Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines will both start regular commercial operations with their A380s to India, it was a quest of who will do it first. And Singapore Airlines will take that cake. From May 30, 2014 onwards, Singapore Airlines is upgrading 1 service per day to Mumbai, which was earlier operated by the Boeing 77W to the Airbus A380. This means the 5 hour journey will be now easier for the lovers of the Singapore Airlines Suites class.
The first flight from Singapore to Mumbai of SQ424 on the A380 will be on May 30, 2014 and the first flight from Mumbai to Singapore as SQ423 will be operated on May 31, 2014. These flights have now been loaded in the booking engines as well. This also means that Singapore Airlines is trimming its 3 flights per day to Mumbai to 2 flights per day, making one morning and one evening departure. SQ425 and SQ426 will be clubbed with the other night departures.
Delhi will also see the A380 being pressed into operation on the same day with both the evening departures being clubbed and one A380 being pushed into service. The Singapore – Delhi service will be SQ406 which will be an A380 and on the return leg, it will be operated as SQ403.
Here are the overall schedules:
Singapore – Delhi
SQ402 SIN0235 – 0535DEL 772 D
SQ406 SIN1725 – 2005DEL 388 DSQ401 DEL0925 – 1740SIN 772 D
SQ403 DEL2205 – 0610+1SIN 388 DSingapore – Mumbai
SQ422 SIN0730 – 1020BOM 772 D
SQ424 SIN1915 – 2155BOM 388 DSQ423 BOM0025 – 0820SIN 388 D
SQ421 BOM1145 – 1945SIN 772 D
I can say this is great news because finally the Indian flying population will be able to experience the A380 which various airlines have invested to make their top class products over the past few years. Now let us see if Emirates or Lufthansa lines up their planes next? I don’t think British Airways will be coming anytime soon.
Also, another interesting thing to note will be what will be Jet Airways’ response? They’re operating 2 daily flights from Mumbai to Singapore on B737 narrow body aircrafts, while even Air India has widebodies in service to Singapore.
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Given that the 77W which has been replaced had 8 F seats and had 2 award seats available for pretty much every date, how do they expect to fill the A380 cabin with 12 suites? Here’s hoping that they’ll open up sooner rather than later.
Here goes the award availability for partner airlines.
Its disappeared 🙁
@Varun I swear I saw suites class a while back available. Now not there!
Excellent news AJ ! I am so tempted to book an award F to SIN!
Score! Looks like my DEL flight in First Class got upgraded to Suites
Must say how surprised I’m that Emirates let the #1 entrant crown slip there, especially after getting their A380 for the India Aviation show. Another part of the brain tells me that Emirates did that intentionally to cordon off “India’s unofficial National airline” tag. Now that they have extra seats beginning this summer season, I’m expecting them to bring 380 soon to Indian shores as well, as me & Devesh had predicted in our A380 article couple of months back.