All posts tagged: News

SilkAir to upgrade cabins with flat bed business class seats, to be folded into SIA

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For the first time, SIA has gone public to address the elephant in the room: merging of the SilkAir into the Singapore Airlines brand. From 2020, the regional arm of Singapore Airlines will embark on an extensive cabin upgrade of the narrow body fleet, including lie-flat business class seats, seat back entertainment screen across all cabins to “ensure closer product and service consistency across the SIA Group’s full-service network”. The announcement also said that the SilkAir brand will only be merged into SIA after “a sufficient number of aircraft have been fitted with the new cabin product”. Finally it’s happening Many analysts have applauded the move and observed that this is ‘long overdue’, and that Singapore Airlines Group has come full circle to once again operate only two brands, down from four, which is a sensible move. While some people may be reluctant to give up the branding SilkAir has established over the last two decades, I do feel it’s no loss – it hasn’t quite caught up with times anyway. Most observers are watching how …

SPG members alert: 2018 is your last year to earn SPG Gold with 10 stays

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2016 and 2017 were good years for me – I had status in not one, but two hotel programmes, all thanks to Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood hotels. But obviously good things don’t last. In what seemed like a seemingly long week for SPG, Marriott Rewards and Ritz-Carlton Rewards members, all was finally revealed early today when details of the changes to unify both programmes were announced. If there are five key takeaways, they are: All three loyalty programmes are unified essentially with point, elite tiers and earning requirements aligned across, and you can transfer points freely from one to another, or earn elite-qualifying nights from one portfolio towards another programme. Marriott will only rebrand all three into a single programme in 2019. There will be six tiers in the new programmes. For SPG, this means a new Silver Elite tier at 10 night. Gold Elite will now require 25 nights, while Platinum Elite goes for 50 nights and Platinum Premier Elite at 75 nights. All elite qualifications will be made based on nights, and not …

Qantas’ Kangaroo Route to fly via Singapore from 26 March 2017

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Five years after moving out the transit point of its flagship Sydney-London route to Dubai, Qantas is now moving the layover stop back to Singapore from next year. Along with the shift of the stopover point, Qantas will also increase services to Melbourne to twice daily, including a daily A380 service. Qantas and Singapore shares a historic link, given that the Australian carrier operated its first international service to Singapore way back in 1935, becoming one of the oldest airlines to operate into Singapore. In 2012, Qantas and Emirates became strategic partners, which saw Qantas moving its transit point for Australia-London flights to Dubai. This is so that Qantas customers travelling from Australia could benefit from connecting to Emirates’ network of over 30 destinations in Europe in Dubai. With the move to Dubai, Qantas also suspended flights to Frankfurt via Singapore in 2013, and focused on only point-to-point destinations between Australia and Asia. In its announcement of the return, Qantas also announced the extension of the partnership with Emirates, which means that Qantas and Emirates …

SilkAir to launch flights to its first Japanese destination – Hiroshima

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SilkAir has announced today that it will launch three times weekly non-stop flights to Hiroshima, Japan from 30 October 2017. This will be SilkAir’s first destination in Japan. The flight will depart at 1.45am on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays and arrive at 9.30am the same morning. Returning flights from Hiroshima will depart at 10.25am and land at Changi Airport at 3.40pm. The new route is significant on several fronts – it will be Hiroshima’s first non-stop link to Southeast Asia, as well as its furthest destination; and it will be the first Southeast Asian carrier to fly to Hiroshima. It is also set to become SilkAir’s furthest destination, edging out Cairns by a few minutes. Why SilkAir? Within the Singapore Airlines Group, it is very interesting that SilkAir was chosen to service this route. While it is technically SilkAir’s first scheduled services to Japan, it is not entirely new to the market, having previously ran seasonal charters to Okinawa and Hiroshima, with seats sold by travel agents. Previously, travellers to Hiroshima will have to transit at either …