Hawaii is back on Singapore’s radar for the first time in 25 years.
Scoot, the low-cost, long-haul subsidiary of the Singapore Airlines Group, said Tuesday it plans to fly to Honolulu at the end of this year to mark its first foray into the United States. It also will be the only airline to serve Hawaii from that country since Singapore Airlines canceled its Singapore-Taipei-Honolulu-Los Angeles route on July 31, 1992.
The 5-year-old budget airline, which earlier this year announced its intention to fly to Hawaii by the end of 2017 or early 2018, will begin service Dec. 19 with four flights a week aboard its 329-seat Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The route will include a layover of between one and two hours in Osaka, Japan.
Scoot’s flights will depart Singapore on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The airline has a promotional round-trip fare now through Oct. 29 from as low as $280 from Honolulu to Osaka and $480 from
Honolulu to Singapore (via Osaka). Regular round-trip fares start from $344 and $590, respectively.
“Anytime you add service from a new destination, you increase tourism to Hawaii due to advertising by the airline,” Hawaii aviation historian Peter Forman said.
The layover in Osaka will provide further competition to and from Honolulu on that portion of the route. Osaka-Honolulu already is being served by both Hawaiian Airlines and Delta Air Lines as well as Malaysian carrier AirAsia X, which uses Osaka as a stopover after initiating its route from Kuala Lumpur.
Scoot and Tiger Airways, a former budget carrier of Singapore Airlines, merged on July 25 after Tiger was delisted from the Singapore Stock Exchange. The merged airline, now operating under the Scoot name, will operate two different fleets: the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that was in the existing Scoot fleet and the Airbus 320 that was previously operated by Tiger.
“With the completion of the merger, Scoot now provides excellent connectivity with 60 destinations across 17 countries,” Scoot CEO Lee Lik Hsin said in a statement. “Our network is set to grow further as our fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners and A320 aircraft is expected to be doubled in the next five years. Scoot now owns a combined fleet of 38 aircraft with 44 more on order.”
Honolulu is Scoot’s second long-haul destination following the debut of Singapore-Athens, Greece, in June. The Honolulu service is among five new destinations for the airline. The other four are Kuching and Kuantan in Malaysia, Harbin in northeastern China and Palembang in Indonesia.
