It was one of the most anticipated returns in the flight schedule from El Prat. As of this Tuesday, July 4, Singapore Airlines recovers the direct line to Singapore, suspended three years ago due to the global health crisis. This left the number of intercontinental links from Barcelona practically zero. The national airline of the Asian city-state was one of the first to recover the service, in a testimonial way, although since that recovery and the increase in frequencies between the two cities, the Asian aircraft, an Airbus A350, has always made an intermediate stopover. in Malpensa, the great airport of Milan.
“In recent months, demand has increased significantly at both ends of the line, so it was time to reconnect both cities with a direct flight, as was the case before 2020,” he told La Vanguard Joan Lim, the director of Singapore Airlines for Spain and Portugal. Lim arrived in Barcelona at the end of 2021 to take over her position in the Iberian Peninsula delegation that is based in the Catalan capital. Since he landed in the city, one of his first efforts was to recover direct links, which make a flight of nearly 11,000 kilometers more attractive and competitive.
“Uniting both cities non-stop, we managed to attract passengers arriving in Barcelona from all parts of Spain and Portugal. We have agreements with Vueling and Iberia so that they feed our A350 with a direct destination to Southeast Asia”, indicates Lim. Normally, 30% of the passengers on this flight have Singapore as their final destination and 70% go through Changi airport, one of the national prides of that small country. Then they continue their journey to other countries in Asia and Oceania such as the Philippines, Australia or Thailand. Also noteworthy are trips with a final destination to Indonesia, with Bali as the star location, Vietnam and distant New Zealand, which is not so much seen from Singapore.
The return of these direct flights will initially have two weekly frequencies, while another three flights will continue to have an intermediate stop in Italy. Scale that does not arrive on time and that even Lim has managed to be able to market even though it is not a European company. After the restart of operations, tickets can be bought between the capital of Lombardy and that of Catalonia thanks to a fifth freedom agreement agreed with the governments of Spain and Italy from that of Singapore, offering something that is not only exotic due to the origin of the company, but it is also the only flight operated by a company that is not low cost between the two cities. For the moment, this section will continue to be marketed, taking advantage of the seats that remain empty on the Singapore-Europe section after the stop at Malpensa and vice versa, as Thai Thai did in its day from Madrid, when it operated flights to Bangkok with a stop intermediate in Rome.
The delegate of the Asian airline in Spain has been in Madrid in recent weeks and there she has heard different requests for the establishment of flights from Barajas to Changi. In fact, these demands would mean a restoration, since Singapore Airlines arrived in Spain for the first time on a regular basis through Madrid operating flights on the legendary Boeing 747. Later it suspended them and when, in the early years of this century, it once again made a European expansion Beyond the classic destinations of London, Paris or Frankfurt, it opted for Milan and Barcelona at the same time, where it landed for the first time in 2006 with what was then the largest plane that regularly operated in El Prat: the Boeing 777. Initially it was with the -200 series of this model, which after a short time was changed to the -300 with more passenger and cargo capacity. With that aircraft it continued to grow and consolidate its market.
One of the great moments of the company in El Prat occurred in 2011. Five years after its commitment to Barcelona, ??this airport became an intermediate stopover to reach its first destination in South America: Sao Paulo. To do this, it extended its direct flight by making it continue to the economic capital of Brazil from El Prat, a service that it carried out in a shared code with the extinct Spanair (the existence of the Barcelona company was essential to be able to start this service) and even the one that survived , since the flights by which it was possible to fly between Barcelona and Brazil with a Singapore plane continued to operate until 2016, the year the route was canceled due to a notable drop in demand, caused by the irruption of other companies from the Middle East in the Latin American market and the severe economic crisis of the American country after the Rio games.
In reference to returning to Madrid, Lim indicates to this newspaper that it is something that, like so many projects, is being studied, although there is nothing concrete. “Our home in Spain and Portugal is Barcelona and if at any time we bet on Madrid it would be because we want to have two different destinations in Spain and not change one for the other”, he clarifies.
The flights that are reopening this Tuesday are commercially justified by the good figures of the route, which in recent months has been around 90% occupancy on practically all trips. Demand skyrocketed like never before in 2022 and 2023 is being a year in which, despite being high, it is stabilizing. In this same financial year, the company has recovered a highly valued award: the Skytrax for the best airline in the world. Last year it was in second place only surpassed by Qatar Airways, with which it has crossed positions this year. In the most prestigious awards in the sector, its hub, Singapore-Changi, has also managed to once again be the first in the world, after being third in 2022, surpassed then by Doha and Tokyo-Haneda.
For the Republic of Singapore, a territory of less than 700 km2 (Andorra has 468) air transport is a matter of state, hence the airline-airport pairing works like clockwork, feed each other and in turn give prestige to that city- state, which has aviation, finance and maritime transport as strategic elements. As of this Tuesday, this Asian plaza once again has direct flights with Barcelona. Initially, they will be maintained for the next two months and will be definitively recovered in March 2024.