Singapore Airlines (SIA) has added Cairns to its global network, with the arrival of flight SQ203 at 17:39 local time on Monday 28 March, marking the airline’s first time to operate regularly scheduled passenger services to the North Queensland city.
Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, SIA’s regional airline, SilkAir, operated daily services to Cairns. However, with the integration of SilkAir into SIA in 2021 and the launch of SQ203, the route has now officially become the sixth Australian destination in SIA’s global network.
Singapore Airlines regional vice president South West Pacific, Louis Arul, said the new flight was was an exciting and important step in the recovery of tourism for North Queensland.
“We are very excited to have Cairns join our global network, which is nearing 100 destinations, and we look forward to supporting the return of international travel,” Arul said.
From 11 April, SIA will deploy its brand-new Boeing 737-8 aircraft on the route, and from 30 May, it will provide greater connectivity to Cairns by increasing operations to five times per week.
Furthermore, from 1 April, fully vaccinated passengers travelling to Singapore will no longer be required to quarantine or test for COVID-19 on arrival, but they will still need to take a pre-departure test and meet existing visa requirements. As a result, SIA and Scoot will no longer designate specific Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) flights from 1 April.
Travellers, regardless of vaccination status, will be allowed to transit through Singapore on almost all SIA and Scoot flights as long as they meet the entry requirements of their final destination.
