SQ Quits Penang! MI to Take Over all Flights.

[ycp81]

SilkAir serves Penang
By Nicholas Yong

SINGAPORE Airlines' flights between Singapore and Penang will soon be operated by its regional wing.

From 1 Dec, SilkAir will take over SIA's daily morning flight to Penang. SilkAir currently flies to Penang twice a day.

By taking over the Singapore Airlines flight, SilkAir will serve Penang three times daily, with a morning frequency in addition to the current afternoon and evening frequencies.

Customers who have made advance bookings to fly the Singapore-Penang route on SQ will be re-accommodated on SilkAir flights.

In a joint statement on Monday, SIA and SilkAir said that the move would optimise the utilisation of SIA Group's resources and present a better match of capacity to demand.

'Since the launch of SilkAir's services on the Singapore-Penang route in June this year, we have received a very good response from our customers through healthy loads and positive feedback on our inflight service. We hope to count on their continued support,' said Mr Chin Yau Seng, SilkAir's Chief Executive.

[flyguy]

Am surprised that SQ totally quit Penang and giving all to silkair. That would mean no widebody 777 or 330 from SIN-PEN. Not sure if its matter of time before SQ drops ULK totally and let MI take over its 2 T7/330 flights too.

[ycp81]

Think SQ will still maintain its 4x daily (2x daily on weekends) morning and evening peak flights to KUL as they are still doing relatively well with business travellers.

[SQADL333]

That's An Insult MI to Penang from Singapore.

They stand to lose quite a lot of seats daily downgrading from a 777 to a A320

[boing]

I believe the SIN-KUL and SIN-PEN were the shortest routes flown by the 777 on a regular basis by any airline. Sooner or later, I believe all low-density short haul routes will be handed over to MI. Better allocation of resources i will say.
Of course, SQ 777 will make an impromptu appearance during times of high demand.

[sqdazz]

Its just very poor for *Alliance pax. It's about time silkair either merges with SQ and they operate narrowbodies, or Silkair becomes a member of *Alliance

[Guy Betsy]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo !!!

Gone are the award flights I get from PEN to SIN to BKK/HKG..

Gone are the extra 20kg *G allowance...!

[calvinoeh]

As someone whose homebase in PEN, this sucks. It's going to make *A redemption a nitemare..

[SQADL333]

It's going to make earning points or mileage on almost all star alliance programmes with the exception of Krisflyer a living hell.I am ex Ansett Global Rewards Now Thai Royal Orchid Plus.

[hsf]

Not good news indeed...

[TerryK]

It is an unfortunate worldwide trend.

Many UA routes are being handed over to UX (United Express) as well. UX now operates many of the New York - Chicago flights. The only thing is that UA treats UX flights the same as UA flights, while MI is not even in *A.

[Toffees]

this is not good....but expected of SQ...my friend who works in SQ said its just a matter of time......gone r the days of 777....

[Kyo]

I guess it'd goodbye to the PEN SKL also... there goes my pre-planned booking for CNY...

[Guy Betsy]

If SQ think that their regular SQ folk will just switch over to MI, they're sadly disillusional. I'll give my money to either Air Asia or MH now!

[B727]

I dunno why SQ did not lease some 332s along with those 333s so that they can still service destinations like PEN and HYD. You know, destinations that were served very well with the 310. It is a big step up capacity-wise to the 777 from the 310 (unless your station is CAN with the entire Chinese market growing rapidly).

It is sad to see a longtime station like PEN relegated to pure MI service.