Singapore Airlines will withdraw the A380 from the Frankfurt-New York route

After being one of the airports with the highest movement of Super Jumbo aircraft Airbus A380New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport will run out of another of the services operated by this iconic aircraft starting in May next year, as Singapore Airlines has decided to remove it from the Singapore-Frankfurt-New York route as demand has not been as expected and it can exploit those aircraft on other, more profitable routes.

It is not that Singapore is abandoning the route to Frankfurt or New York, on the contrary, it is simply switching aircraft from the A380 to a Boeing 777-300ER which has a little less capacity and can handle the route very well. But add to this that many of the airlines that served New York with A380s before the pandemic either no longer have them or are not shipping them, the aircraft is becoming a rare bird at Kennedy. Leaving Singapore, only Korean Air, Emirates and Qatar will remain at that airport, Air France no longer operates it and neither British Airways nor Lufthansa will fly it there.

The flight to Kennedy via Frankfurt consumes Singapore 2 A380s per day given the total turnaround time. So leaving the flight to New York, Singapore will have 2 A380s available to use on some Asia Pacific routes that are seeing higher demand, so Melbourne (MEL), Australia will have the A380 back on the daily flight and Sydney (SYD) will have a second daily A380 flight from May 2023. The aircraft will also operate to Hong Kong from 26 March and they are looking to increase services to Taipei, Bangkok and Phuket.

Singapore VP of Marketing Planning JoAnn Tan said:

Looking into 2023, we see strong demand for destinations in Southeast Asia and Australia. As we restore our route network in this region to pre-pandemic levels, our customers will have even more flight options to plan their travels.”

And for New York, customers will be able to continue using Singapore-Frankfurt-New York flights SQ24/SQ23 operated with Boeing 777-300ERs, as well as flight SQ22/SQ21 which is the non-stop service between Singapore and Newark (EWR ) operated the Airbus A350-900 ULR. Due to expected demand, Singapore will also reduce the frequencies of its direct flight to Los Angeles (LAX) from daily to three times a week, and its Singapore-Manchester-Houston flight will decrease from four times a week to three times a week.