Swiss Air to fill in for SAS on Singapore route
Swiss International Air Lines will enter into a code-sharing agreement with Scandinavian Airlines on March 26 for the Bangkok-Singapore route.
Brian Sinclair-Tompson, manager of Swiss Air for Thailand, Laos, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam, said yesterday that the tie-up would be a pilot project of collaboration among Star Alliance members.It will also help SAS, which will pull the plug on its Bangkok-Singapore flights on April 1. Swiss Air becomes a full Star Alliance member next month, after which its frequent flyers will be able to use their miles on 16 partner airlines in the alliance. South African Airways will also join the alliance next month. Swiss Air will merge its frequent flyer programme, TravelClub, into Deutsche Lufthansa's Miles & More. Swiss Travel Club mileage balances will be transferred one-for-one to Miles & More. Swiss Air operates six fights per week on its Zurich-Bangkok-Singapore route. In July, Swiss Air's Bangkok office will move under the same roof with Lufthansa, which took over the Swiss carrier early last year. Its Asia-Pacific offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Jakarta merged into the German airline's bureaus earlier this year. Swiss Air had a load factor of 86-93 per cent on its Zurich-Bangkok-Singapore service last year. Swiss Air carried 9.6 million passengers last year, 4.1 per cent more than in 2004. While capacity was reduced by 4.7 per cent, total traffic volume in revenue per passenger per kilometre terms declined only 0.6 per cent. The annual seat load factor improved accordingly. The seat load factor for December of last year was up 1.4 percentage points on the year to 74.9 per cent. Suchat Sritama, The Nation
|
