The Northern-Winter 2011/121 season which starts this week sees an additional 280 weekly flights and 30,000 weekly one-way seats being made available at Singapore Changi Airport to Southeast and Northeast Asia, cementing Changi’s position as a major gateway to the region.

In Southeast Asia, Jetstar Asia, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways and Tiger Airways will operate 50 additional weekly flights to and from Bangkok while AirAsia and Jetstar Asia will operate 42 additional weekly flights to and from Kuala Lumpur. In total, Changi will be connected to and from Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur by 364 and 607 weekly flights respectively. Separately, Changi will be connected to all nine of Singapore’s ASEAN neighbours later this month when Lao Airlines commences thrice-weekly services from Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

Changi Airport will also strengthen its connectivity to China with an additional 6,700 weekly one-way seats to Beijing, Changsha, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Shanghai. SilkAir operates thrice-weekly services to Changsha, a new city link for Changi, from 31 October. Changi is now connected to 25 Chinese cities via more than 650 weekly flights. Passenger traffic between Singapore and Japan experienced its third consecutive month of growth in September 2011, after the earthquake and tsunami in March this year. With Singapore Airlines restoring an additional daily service to Tokyo Haneda from 30 October, the frequency between Singapore and Tokyo2 will return to pre-earthquake levels with some 150 weekly flights connecting the two cities.

Along with the commencement of Lufthansa’s A380 operations in Singapore this week, Changi’s connectivity to Europe has been boosted by KLM’s additional weekly service to Amsterdam. In January 2012, Changi Airport will welcome Transaero’s weekly service to Moscow and Singapore Airlines will increase capacity on its existing Singapore-Frankfurt-New York route with an A380 service.

With the increase in frequencies for the Northern-Winter 2011/12 season, Changi Airport is set to serve more than 6,200 weekly flights by the end of March 2012. This is an increase of about 5%, compared to the over 5,900 weekly flights Changi handled at the end of the Northern-Summer 2011 season.

On the cargo front, there is also additional capacity from Changi Airport to Germany and Europe with the commencement of Lufthansa’s all-cargo freighter operations at Changi and Singapore Airlines Cargo’s new twice-weekly services to Frankfurt. Using the 89-tonne MD11F aircraft, Lufthansa’s all-cargo carrier will complement its existing Aerologic services3. Lufthansa will operate twice-weekly services to Frankfurt with stops in Cairo, Dhaka, Mumbai, New Delhi and Sharjah. Singapore Airlines Cargo’s services to Frankfurt will include stops in Bengaluru, Chennai and Sharjah.

As at 1 November 2011, Changi Airport serves 14 all-cargo carriers operating more than 380 weekly scheduled flights, an increase of 17% compared to a year ago.