Chennai, June 15 (IANS) SilkAir, the regional wing of Singapore Airlines, has launched daily services between Singapore and Chennai, hoping to garner a good share in the passenger traffic between south India and the city state.
With the addition of Chennai, SilkAir now flies to six points in the country. The other cities it flies to are Thiruvananthapuram and Coimbatore (thrice weekly), Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kochi (daily).
SilkAir also hopes to have a decent capacity utilisation of its belly cargo capacity on its flights in and out of India.
‘Our aircrafts can carry around three tonnes in their belly. We are hopeful the capacity will be fully utilised as there is good interest for cargo shipments out of Singapore to India,’ SilkAir Chief Executive Chin Yau Seng told reporters here Tuesday.
He said the group has a separate company for cargo service which takes care of freighter services.
According to Chin, the current load factor for the airlines out of south India is satisfactory.
Asked about eating into Singapore Airlines’ custom, Chin said: ‘We compliment each other. Our flight timings are different. While Singapore Airlines flies largely in night we operate our flights during the day.’
He said the former operates wide bodied crafts whereas SilkAir flies only narrow bodied planes.
