Singapore Airlines was the first carrier to bring an Airbus A380 to Mumbai Airport once the government allowed A380 operations in India. Since then the flagship product has flown to Mumbai every day on one daily rotation of the Singapore Airlines A380.
Given SQ only has 19 Airbus A380 aircraft in total, this is a significant station in their view to fly one of their flagship aeroplanes. Shipra and I travelled from Mumbai to Los Angeles a couple of years ago on Singapore Airlines First Class (Mumbai – Singapore, Singapore – Tokyo, Tokyo – Los Angeles)
Singapore Airlines A380 (courtesy Flickr)
Singapore Airlines also recently introduced a newer version of their cabin products, which includes new SQ Suites Class and new SQ Business Class. While the airline took the delivery of their first plane with the new cabin on SQ, it also clarified that they will start the work on retrofitting all 14 of the older A380s from mid next year.
Turns out, Mumbai will be the first destination which will lose an A380 to the retrofit exercise. AirlineRoute.net reports that the A380 in Mumbai will be substituted with a Boeing 777-300ER for the time being. To help with the loss in capacity, they are also up gauging another flight operating with an A333 to a B773 3 times a week.
SQ424/423 01JUL18 – 31AUG18 777-300ER replaces A380, 1 daily
SQ426/425 25MAR18 – 31MAY18 777-300 replaces A330-300, 3 weekly
Whether the new cabin would then be brought to Mumbai as of September 1, 2018 is still unknown. So if you want to experience the SQ A380 (older version) maybe a good idea to fly before July 1, 2018.
Etihad was the first airline to withdraw their A380 service from India.
What do you think of the move from SQ to remove the A380 from India? Do you think they will bring the new product back to Mumbai earlier or later?
I would be surprised if the 380 comes back. It makes way more sense for SIA to fly a smaller aircrafts with Low premium capacity. Mumbai singapore although a business route cannot support 72 business class seats and most of the transit traffic from india via singapore is more leisure driven- south east Asia and Australia. I wouldn’t be surprised if the A380 is cut from delhi as well and replaced with an extra frequency on a 350 or even a 787-10 in the future.
I would think Paris and New York would be more of a priority for the new product.
@IV: but they are longer distance. Mumbai is an important business class revenue generator on top of economy class. This route allows them better revenue uptick due to shorter turnaround. It’s actully smart to do this over NY for sure.