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Singapore Airlines has announced a new route that will link its home base with the capitals of Australia and New Zealand and, as this is a single route, will make Singapore Airlines the first airline to link the two capitals directly together. Singapore Airlines will also be the first airline to operate regularly scheduled international services to and from Canberra.
The route, which has been dubbed the “Capital Express” route will launch on 20 September 2016 and will be served by Singapore Airlines’ 266-seat retrofitted Boeing 777-200 aircraft which comes without a First Class cabin but does offer 38 Business Class seats.
Singapore Airlines Cabins
Unfortunately, based on the cabin configuration that Singapore Airlines has announced, the Business Class seats on the aircraft serving this route will not be the new lie-flat seats but, instead, should be the angled-flat product seen on their refitted short/medium haul fleet.
Singapore Airlines Medium-Haul Business Class Seat – Image courtesy of Singapore Airlines
With the seats arranged in a 2-2-2 formation the best seats to have would appear be the seats in the centre of the cabin as they both have direct aisle assess – no one to climb over if you want to get out and no one clambering over you as you rest or work.
Seat Guru Screenshot of the 777-200 Business Class Cabin
The Economy Class cabin is laid out in a 3-3-3 formation which gives passengers 17.5″ of seat width to work with (not great but also not terrible) and a very generous 34″ of seat pitch.
Schedule
Singapore Airlines will fly the route 4x/week from 20 September on the following schedule:
The flight times allow for connections to/from some major European cities but some connections will require a long layover at the airport – it may be better to schedule flights so you can overnight in Singapore, rest up, and then fly on to Canberra the following day.
Reservations/Code Shares
Reservations for this route are expected to open up on Monday 25 January and Singapore Airlines has confirmed that Virgin Australia will codeshare on both the Canberra-Singapore and Wellington-Canberra sectors. In addition, it is expected that Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines’ Star Alliance partner, will also add their code to the routes before the official launch.
Awards
Singapore Airlines hasn’t updated its award chart to allow for the Canberra-Wellington route but here is what we do know:
According to the Singapore Airlines Award Chart the cost to fly to Canberra or Wellington is the same as both are in the same award zone:
Singapore – Canberra or Wellington (Business Saver) = 55,000 KrisFlyer miles or 46,750 including the 15% saving for booking online.
Singapore – Canberra or Wellington (Economy Saver) = 25,000 KrisFlyer miles or 21,250 including the 15% saving for booking online.
Now for some speculation:
The distance between Canberra and Wellington is very similar to the distance between Singapore and Manilla….
….so it’s not completely unreasonable to speculate that the cost in KrisFlyer miles will be the same for the two routes.
Possible award cost:
Canberra – Wellington (Business Saver) = 17,500 KrisFlyer miles or 14,875 including the 15% saving for booking online.
Canberra – Wellington (Economy Saver) = 7,500 KrisFlyer miles or 6,375 including the 15% saving for booking online.
Those KrisFlyer costs don’t look too bad at all and, if they turn out to be correct, could be a very good way to use up some orphan KrisFlyer Miles or could just be a nice, cheap way of flying between the two cities.
I’ll update this information as soon as I see any changes to the Singapore Airlines award chart or when awards become available to book online.
Featured image courtesy of Singapore Airlines.
