SIA will also increase the number of weekly flights to Beijing Capital International Airport from 18 to 21 starting Aug 5. - ST FILE
SINGAPORE: Those travelling to Beijing will soon have a new flight option when Singapore Airlines (SIA) launches daily flights between Singapore and Beijing’s Daxing International Airport in November.
SIA will also increase the number of weekly flights to Beijing Capital International Airport from 18 to 21 starting Aug 5.
With these new and additional flights, SIA will have 28 weekly flights to Beijing from November, SIA said in a statement on June 24.
With the addition of Beijing Daxing International Airport, the SIA Group – which comprises SIA and its low-cost subsidiary Scoot – will serve 24 destinations in mainland China. Other destinations include Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Chengdu.
Located in the south of Beijing, Daxing airport gives passengers convenient access to Beijing, Hebei, and Tianjin regions, where several world cultural heritage sites are located, via a network of highways, subways and railways, said SIA.
It was launched in 2019 and cost 450 billion yuan (S$87 billion).
The phoenix-shaped airport, abbreviated PKX, will help ease pressure on the existing Capital International Airport in the capital’s northeast.
Designed by the Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, the new airport boasts four runaways and is about 46km from Tiananmen Square, almost twice the distance from the Capital airport to central Beijing.
The inaugural flight SQ810 to Beijing Daxing is scheduled to depart Singapore at 12.30am on Nov 11 and arrive at 6.35am.
The return flight SQ811 will depart from Beijing Daxing at 9.25am on Nov 11 and arrive in Singapore at 3.50pm.
SIA will operate its Boeing 787-10 aircraft, which features 36 Business Class seats and 301 Economy Class seats, on this new service.
SIA’s acting senior vice-president for marketing planning Dai Haoyu said China is a key market for the SIA group and that this new flight allows SIA to offer an additional daily service to Beijing, which is a “popular destination for both tourist and business travellers”.
Beijing Daxing International Airport’s vice-president Kong Yue said SIA is the first foreign airline to operate services from Beijing Daxing International Airport to Singapore.
“We believe the inception of SIA at Beijing Daxing International Airport will bring about a renewed sense of energy and opportunities, fulfilling the travel demand between both countries as we jointly work together for more good things to come,” he said. - The Straits Times/ANN
