Scoot to suspend flights to 4 cities on weak demand and aircraft shortage

Scoot is suspending flights to four cities - Lucknow in Northern India, Kalibo in the Philippines, Quanzhou in China and the Maldives' capital Male, due to a combination of weak demand and aircraft shortage.

All flights are served by the airline's Airbus A320 aircraft, the low-cost arm of Singapore Airlines (SIA) said on Monday.

The aircraft shortage arose due to the grounding of SilkAir's Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet. It would also no longer transfer SilkAir's Boeing 737-800NG aircraft to Scoot in fiscal 2019/2020, as it had originally announced in November 2018.

Other SilkAir routes Scoot had earlier committed to transfer over will continue to be undertaken, the airline said. SilkAir is the regional wing of SIA.

Scoot serves Lucknow, Kalibo and Quanzhou three times weekly, and Male four times weekly, the carrier said on Monday. In the month of June, it will serve Lucknow four times weekly, and from now until the services are suspended, it will be serving Kalibo four times weekly for selected periods.

Affected customers with existing bookings have been contacted and provided options for rebooking and refunds of the fight services, Scoot added.

This article was first published in The Business Times. Permission required for reproduction.