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Emirates has received approval from Singapore’s competition watchdog to end nonstop flights between Brisbane and Singapore.
The last Brisbane-Singapore flight would take place at the end of March 2020, the airline said in a statement on Friday. The route was currently served with Boeing 777-300ERs.
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In April 2019, Emirates applied to the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) to withdraw from the route.
The CCCS approval was required because when Emirates and Qantas established their global alliance in 2013, the pair gave a voluntary undertaking to the CCCS regarding seat capacity on two routes – Brisbane-Singpore and Melbourne-Singapore.
The CCCS decision published on Thursday said its assessment found the alliance would “continue to have net economic benefit on air passenger services” even after Emirates’ withdrawal from the Brisbane-Singapore route.
“Emirates provided evidence to support its claims on capacity under-utilisation, falling revenues and rising costs in relation to the Singapore-Brisbane route,” the CCCS decision said.
“Based on the information provided by the parties and third parties, CCCS assessed that there remains competitive constraint on the parties after the variation that removes Emirates’ seat capacity commitment for the Singapore-Brisbane route.
“Seat capacity also remains adequate to meet demand for passengers whose journey terminates at Singapore or Brisbane.”
The airline apologised for any inconvenience caused, adding passengers booked to travel on its Brisbane-Singapore service after March 31 2020 would be contacted and offered re-booking options.
“Both Australia and Singapore are important business and leisure destinations for Emirates and we remain committed to serving our customers in Brisbane with two daily flights to Dubai, where passengers can connect onward to North America, Europe, South America, the Middle East and Africa,” it said.
It is Emirates’ second route withdrawal from Brisbane. The airline previously also flew from Brisbane to Auckland. However, this was dropped in 2018 along with Emirates’ Melbourne-Auckland tag-flight.
Meanwhile, the airline was continuing to codeshare on Qantas’s daily Brisbane-Singapore offering with Airbus A330 equipment. Singapore Airlines was the other airline on the route with four daily services.
Red Cee
says:This is good news for both Qantas and Singapore Airlines. I had also heard a rumour that Qantas are looking at a second daily service from BNE to SIN. Maybe this is all part of the agreement.
Lechuga
says:I’m not entirely sure about Brisbane, but if it’s anything like Melbourne then Emirates took over a QF flight to Singapore in the first place. From my own memory, EK 405 took over from a QF 747 when there was 3 flights to Singapore a day. (1 continued on to LHR)
If Brisbane is anything like that, it could be QF taking a route back.