It’s the once popular route that serviced Australians for almost 30 years.
But now, a major global airline has pulled the pin on a daily flight operating out of Australia’s second busiest airport.
Emirates has announced that after 28 years, the carrier will no longer offer flights out of Melbourne and into Singapore. The return, from Singapore to Melbourne, has also been cut.
The eight-hour route, which has been in service since 1996, operated using a Boeing 777, with the Melbourne departure taking off just before 2.30am. The return journey, however, operated at a more civilised time of 10.25am, having passengers into Melbourne around 7.30pm.
The decision to axe the route comes as the airline informed the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) of its intentions to pull out of the particular market last month, however it has not been confirmed when the services will officially end.
It’s not the first time the airline has axed a route from Australia to Singapore. Just prior to pausing flights between Melbourne and Singapore over the course of the pandemic, Emirates canned its Singapore to Brisbane route in 2019.
It is understood that once the Melbourne-Singapore route comes to an end, the Dubai-based carrier will no longer operate its aircraft between Singapore and Australia at all. However, it will continue codeshare flights to Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.
A spokesperson for Emirates told The Straits Times earlier this week that the exact date of when the route would come to an end would be revealed shortly, and come “after (they received) the final assessment from CCCS regarding the impact of being released from its capacity commitments that were set out in an alliance with Qantas”.
In a statement sent to news.com.au, a spokesperson for the airline added that once the final assessment from CCS was complete and a “termination date is finalised, Emirates will communicate changes to affected passengers and offer them alternative travel arrangements”.
Source: www.news.com.au
