Singapore Airlines and Scandinavian Airlines will be expanding their codeshare agreement to cover more destinations in Europe, south-east Asia, Australia and New Zealand, it has been announced.
Effective immediately, codesharing will be extended to SAS operated flights from Copenhagen to Alesund, Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim in Norway; Gothenburg in Sweden; Aalborg, Aarhus and Billund in Denmark; and Turku in Finland.
In return, SIA will also be extending codesharing on SIA-operated flight beyong Singapore to Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney in Australia; Auckland in New Zealand; Denpasar Bali and Jakarta in Indonesia; as well as Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
The move comes less than two months after Thai Airways beefed up its three Scandinavian routes to better compete with low-cost carrier Norwegian (see news, July 3).
The expansion of the codeshare agreement will help deepen SIA's access to destinations in Scandinavia, while SAS will benefit from the increased exposure within the Asia Pacific region.
Both SIA and SAS are members of Star Alliance, and both have been codesharing since December 2010.
Their initial partnership saw SIA adding its code to SAS-operated flights beyond Copenhagen to Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm, while SAS would codeshare on SIA-operated flights between Copenhagen and Singapore, and on selected flights between Singapore and Bangkok.
The two carriers received final regulatory approval for a joint venture late last year. This permits both airlines to engage in joint operations, including the co-ordination of flight schedules and join sales activities.
As part of the partnership, SIA increased frequency of flights between Singapore and Copenhagen on March 31 from three to five flights per week, with SAS codesharing on these flights.
Clement Huang
