Singapore Airlines is scaling back its Paris flights later this year, with the usual twice daily service to and from the French capital reduced to between 7 and 11 times weekly from early December 2024 right through to the end of the winter season in late March 2025.

These changes will not affect the daily four-class Boeing 777-300ER service on this route, SQ336/335, but will see a reduction in the Airbus A350 Long Haul operation on SQ332/331, which is currently also a daily flight.

Paris service reductions

Here’s how the twice daily schedule on SIA’s Paris route looks for the first part of the upcoming northern winter season, from late October 2024 to early December 2024.

Singapore Paris
27 Oct 2024 – 1 Dec 2024

			Days
			M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	SQ336 777-300ER
SIN 00:15		CDG 07:15
Duration: 14:00
	SQ332 A350 LH
SIN 13:55		CDG 20:55
Duration: 14:00

Paris Singapore
27 Oct 2024 – 1 Dec 2024

			Days
			M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	SQ335 777-300ER
CDG 10:40		SIN 06:15*
Duration: 12:35
	SQ331 A350 LH
CDG 22:20		SIN 17:55*
Duration: 12:35

* Next day

From early December this year till mid-January 2025, the SQ332/331 service is then scaled back to four times weekly operation, as shown below (click to expand).

Furthermore, during the peak holiday period there is no Tuesday SQ332/331 service in either direction on 24th December 2024 and 31st December 2024, making the flight only three times weekly between 23rd December 2024 and 5th January 2025.

The biggest drop in service then sees a complete removal of SQ332/331 flights for the last two weeks of January 2025.

This leaves the daily SQ336/335 Boeing 777-300ER service as the sole option on this route during this period, a move that’s likely to the airline deploy more capacity in the Asia-Pacific region due to the Chinese New Year holidays.

Four times weekly service is then restored from February 2025 through to the end of the northern winter season in late March 2025.

For the summer 2025 season, Singapore Airlines is provisionally planning twice daily flights once again on its Paris route, with the following aircraft and timings.

What’s the impact?

During the 2nd December 2024 to 29th March 2025 period, Singapore Airlines was initially loading 236 flights in each direction on its Paris route, but as a result of these cancellations there will now be only 177 flights in each direction, a 25% reduction.

Seat capacity falls similarly, from an originally-planned 61,006 in each direction down to 46,079 in each direction, a 24% reduction.

For those booked in First Class there is no impact, since this cabin is exclusive to the Boeing 777-300ER aircraft operating SQ336/335 flights on this route, which are not affected by any service reductions.

If your SQ332/331 flight is affected, Singapore Airlines will be rebooking you on a different day where the flight is still operating, or offering a switch to the same-day SQ336/335 where available, though this will still mean changing your plans by at least 12 hours.

Will other routes increase?

A reduction in Airbus A350 Long Haul deployment on the Paris route this winter is a bit surprising, since that fleet is due to grow by one aircraft from around September 2024, with the delivery of the final passenger A350 to the airline (9V-SJI).

It’s not without precedent though.

While the airline retained twice daily Paris flights in the most recent winter season (2023/24), the route was only served 10 times weekly in the winter 2022/23 season and during pre-COVID winter periods too.

SIA’s capacity on the route might therefore just be ‘right sizing’ back to normal, having been higher than pre-pandemic levels over the last year or so.

The airline has recently had slot approval for some additional flights in the UK market for the upcoming winter season too:

• 2 additional weekly flights at London Gatwick, now sufficient for daily service, like the carrier was initially seeking for the route.
• 1 additional weekly flight at Manchester, for an SQ301/302 terminator service that does not continue to and from Houston, which would increase flights from 5 weekly to 6 weekly on the Manchester – Singapore route.

It wouldn’t be too surprising to see these services added using the A350 Long Haul fleet just as the Paris route frequencies drop from December this year, once schedules are finalised.

Watch out for those additional flights being added, since award space on freshly-loaded services can sometimes be generous for the first few weeks.

Singapore Airlines is reducing its flight frequencies and seat capacity on Paris flights by a quarter from December 2024 through to March next year, though this just returns the route to its usual pre-COVID format in the winter months.

Nonetheless it’s interesting that twice daily flights were originally sold for the whole winter season, then some of these were cancelled, leaving affected customers who have already booked facing at least a 12-hour time change for their journey.

Recent additional flight approvals for the winter season to the UK market could be behind the changes, since we are expecting the airline to hike to daily London Gatwick services and six times weekly Manchester flights too.

An early December increase on these routes would be good timing for the busy Christmas and New Year holiday travel period, and looks to coincide nicely with this Paris service contraction.

Stay tuned for the latest changes to SIA’s upcoming winter schedule as it becomes finalised over the next few weeks.

(Cover Photo: Maxim Grohotov / Shutterstock)