Back in March 2018, Singapore Airlines announced that its regional subsidiary, SilkAir, would begin to fold into its parent airline. Later that year, Singapore Airlines’ low-cost wing, Scoot, began to take over SilkAir routes. Since then, the integration has continued steadily. One step of this is repainting SilkAir’s aircraft with Singapore Airlines’ livery.
Rolling out of the shop
Our first glance came from the Twitter account of the Indonesian website Aviatren. An image of a Boeing 737-800 in Singapore Airlines livery was posted on September 15th.
Singapore B737 🥰😍 pic.twitter.com/Qp9ayVQo4c
— Aviatren (@aviatren) September 5, 2020
As you can see from the image above, it’s nothing too earth-shattering or revolutionary. The paint job falls in line with the rest of Singapore Airlines’ fleet, with the wordmark above a dark blue and gold band. On the tail is the logo of the airline – a stylized bird that represents a mythical bird known as the silver kris.
According to One Mile At A Time (OMAAT), this first 737-800 getting its revised livery has the registration code 9V-MGA. This aircraft is six and a half years old and has only ever flown with Silk Air. OMAAT also reports that this particular plane has been grounded for over five months, operating its last flight on March 20th.
Airfleets indicates that SilkAir has 16 Boeing 737-800s in its fleet, with six 737 MAX 8s in storage and another seven on order. Presumably, the remaining jets will also be repainted with Singapore Airlines’ liveries.
Slowly resuming flights
Singaporean news outlet Business Times reports that Singapore Airlines and SilkAir have reinstated flights to six cities and increased the frequency of selected services in their passenger network. The news was first reported at the very end of August.
The six cities are as follows:
- Cebu in the Philippines
- Istanbul in Turkey
- Milan in Italy
- Perth in Australia
- Phnom Penh in Cambodia
- Taipei in Taiwan
By the end of November, the SIA group’s passenger capacity is scheduled to reach about 11% of its pre-pandemic capacity. Figures are being compared to January, just before the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Both Singapore Airlines and SilkAir will continue to adjust capacity to match the demand for international air travel.
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Continuing with integration
While some services have already been taken over by Singapore Airlines, it seems that SilkAir will continue operating some services under its brand.
In fact, according to Singapore Airlines’ latest flight schedules, SilkAir will continue to operate the following flights out of Singapore:
- Phnom Penh in Cambodia (MI607 and MI608)
- Medan in Indonesia (MI233/234, as well as MI237/238)
- Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia (MI323 and MI324)
- Cebu in the Philippines (MI559 and MI560)
What do you think of Singapore Airlines ending the SilkAir brand? Can you see this negatively impacting the customer in any way? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.