With the announcement of deployment of the Airbus A380 for daily flights from Delhi and Mumbai from May 30, Singapore Airlines (SIA) will become the first carrier to introduce the world’s largest passenger aircraft in India.
The move comes nearly four months after government relaxing the ban on super-jumbo aircraft operations. As per the rules, A380s will be allowed to land at the country's four main airports - New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad - which are equipped to handle the planes.
The SIA A-380s can fly 471 passengers in a three-class configuration of first class suites, business class and economy. The superjumbo aircraft would operate daily to Mumbai and Delhi from May 30, taking over from two daily flights that currently serve each city using smaller Boeing 777s, SIA's General Manager (India) David Lau said.
He said another daily flight would continue to be operated with B-777s and in total 14 flights would serve these cities per week.
"We have been keen to operate the Airbus A-380 to India and are glad that the Air Services Agreement (ASA) between Singapore and India now allows us to do so," he said. The prevailing bilateral ASA allows SIA to fly 6,000 seats per week from Delhi and Mumbai.
He said India was a particularly important market for SIA and "we are very pleased that more of our customers will soon be able to experience the spaciousness and comfort of the world's largest aircraft."
The Singaporean national carrier was the first airline in the world to operate the A-380 in October 2007 between Singapore and Sydney. The A380 now also serves Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo Narita and Zurich.
