Singapore Airlines axes city’s only nonstop route to Vancouver

Singapore Airlines Ltd. will scrap the city-state’s only nonstop flight to Vancouver from October, a little more than a year after the Asian carrier returned to Canada.

The move is another example of how global hub airlines are having to readjust their networks after the pandemic in order to better match supply and demand. The sharp uptick in travel posts Covid saw carriers worldwide caught short in terms of capacity and the ability to get planes back into the skies quickly enough.

Some are now exploring newer hubs overseas to cushion them against similar disruptions in the future.

Singapore Air, along with low-cost unit Scoot, expects to reach 77% of the group’s pre-Covid capacity by March, according to a quarterly earnings statement Tuesday. Scoot will also halt services to Australia’s Gold Coast from July.

Scoot is however planning to resume services to Haikou, Nanning, Ningbo, Shenyang, and Xi’an in China in late March, as the world’s second-largest aviation market reopens. Singapore Air will also will start additional flights to Barcelona, Frankfurt, and Rome for the summer, and resume flights to Busan in August.

Singapore Air’s flight to Vancouver, which typically took a little more than 13 hours, was on an Airbus SE A350 jet, data from Flightradar24.com shows.