More than six years after COVID-19 grounded much of its fleet, Singapore Airlines has finally restored its network to pre-pandemic scale in 2026, with most key regional and long-haul destinations back in full swing – and many now exceeding 2019 levels.
Based on our latest analysis, SIA has 1,250 passenger departures from Singapore scheduled in the week commencing 14th December 2026, just one flight short of the former combined SIA and SilkAir operation in the equivalent week of 2019 (99.9%). Seat capacity has now overtaken pre-COVID levels, with 327,507 seats on offer – 2% more than in 2019.
This mirrors the trend in SIA’s monthly operating statistics, which show the airline’s capacity (in available seat-kilometres) has exceeded the former combined SIA and SilkAir level for the equivalent pre-COVID month in every month since February 2026.
Passenger numbers have done the same since January 2026, peaking at 10% above pre-COVID in March 2026, when Europe-bound traffic spilled over to SIA as capacity through Middle East hubs was disrupted.
Despite this, the airline’s busiest route rankings have undergone something of a reshaping in recent years.
Some cities have fallen behind, with capacity recovery reaching only around two-thirds of pre-COVID levels, while others have climbed the table as Singapore Airlines shifts capacity to different markets, to better address demand.
In this article, we break down Singapore Airlines’ top 15 busiest routes by both seat capacity and weekly flight frequencies, comparing current figures (w/c 14th December 2026) to pre-COVID data (w/c 16th December 2019).
Top 15 routes
Here’s how cities on the Singapore Airlines network rank in terms of one-way seat capacity from Singapore, and how that compares to 2019 levels.
| Busiest Routes by Weekly Seat Capacity (December 2026) |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | City | Seat Capacity |
vs. pre-COVID |
| 1 | Jakarta | 16,443 | 6% |
| 2 | Bangkok | 15,799 | 23% |
| 3 | London | 13,755 | 36% |
| 4 | Sydney | 12,684 | 6% |
| 5 | Kuala Lumpur* | 11,490 | 12% |
| 6 | Melbourne | 11,158 | 14% |
| 7 | Manila | 10,514 | 19% |
| 8 | Bali* | 10,311 | 5% |
| 9 | Tokyo | 10,297 | 17% |
| 10 | Shanghai | 9,625 | 3% |
| 11 | Hong Kong | 9,520 | 35% |
| 12 | Seoul | 9,198 | 9% |
| 13 | Perth | 8,960 | |
| 14 | Beijing | 8,449 | 25% |
| 15 | Brisbane | 8,134 | |
* Comparison vs. pre-COVID includes former SilkAir capacity
Here’s the same analysis for flight frequencies ex-Singapore, a slightly different metric that elevates some regional cities that see multiple daily flights using smaller aircraft, like Phuket and Penang, into the top 15 table.
| Busiest Routes by Weekly Flights (December 2026) |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | City | Weekly Flights |
vs. pre-COVID |
| 1 | Jakarta | 63 | |
| 2 | Kuala Lumpur* | 54 | 22% |
| 3 | Bangkok | 49 | 17% |
| 4 | London | 42 | 50% |
| 5 | Bali* | 42 | 20% |
| 6 | Phuket* | 42 | 20% |
| 7 | Sydney | 35 | |
| 8 | Melbourne | 35 | 9% |
| 9 | Manila | 35 | 25% |
| 10 | Tokyo | 35 | 17% |
| 11 | Hong Kong | 35 | 29% |
| 12 | Penang* | 35 | 17% |
| 13 | Shanghai | 28 | |
| 14 | Seoul | 28 | |
| 15 | Perth | 28 | |
* Comparison vs. pre-COVID includes former SilkAir flights
Jakarta remains the undisputed leader, both by seat capacity and flight frequencies, reaffirming its importance to the airline, with nine daily flights matching its pre-COVID frequency.
Even then, capacity to and from the Indonesian capital remains 6% down on pre-COVID, because lower capacity aircraft are now used (284-seat Boeing 777-300s – non-ERs – were the route’s mainstay, but those have since been retired).
Popular regional business and leisure destination Bangkok is showing impressive growth, now ranking second by seat capacity with 49 weekly flights (up 17% on 2019) and 23% more seats.
Bali sees the same 42 weekly flights as a year ago, but with fewer seats on offer (10,311, down from 11,299 in December 2025), as Boeing 737-8 MAX aircraft are increasingly deployed on the route in place of wide-body aircraft.
London is also seeing strong growth compared to pre-pandemic operation, thanks to SIA’s expansion to the secondary Gatwick Airport in 2024.
That route went daily in March 2025, and a second daily Gatwick service, which began as a supplementary flight in summer 2026, now operates for most of the northern winter season. With four daily flights at Heathrow plus two at Gatwick, London has 42 weekly flights – 50% more than in 2019 – and now ranks third by seat capacity, with 36% more seats than pre-COVID.
Gatwick will also see SIA First Class for the first time from 1st October 2027, when the four-class Boeing 777-300ER replaces the A350 Long Haul on the SQ312/309 service.
(Photo: Shutterstock)
Kuala Lumpur, the carrier’s third-busiest route before COVID, still lags with a 12% capacity shortfall, slightly wider than the 9% gap we saw a year ago.
With more than one in five flights (22%) yet to return to the schedule, the Malaysian capital remains in fifth place by seats, though it’s still second by weekly flights.
Sydney has bounced back, with 35 weekly flights by December including new services to Western Sydney – matching its pre-COVID frequency and up from four daily flights a year ago, though now spread across two airports. That moves it up to fourth place by seat capacity, from eighth in 2025, though overall it’s still 6% below 2019 levels.
Tokyo is this year’s biggest faller, dropping from third to ninth place in the ranking by seat capacity. SIA has 35 weekly flights to the Japanese capital in December 2026, down from 41 the same week the previous year, leaving the seat count 17% below pre-COVID levels.
(Photo: Denys Nevozha)
Hong Kong is still struggling
The one notable standout in the statistics continues to be Hong Kong, which was SIA’s second-busiest route by seat capacity and third-largest by flight frequencies before the pandemic, but now sits down at 11th place in both of these rankings, two spots lower than last year, with 35% fewer seats than in 2019.
(Photo: Hong Kong Tourism Board)
Indeed there has been consistent last-minute award availability on the Singapore – Hong Kong route through the airline’s monthly KrisFlyer Spontaneous Escapes offer, with the city featuring in nine of the last 12 deals, including five of the last six.
By contrast, Hong Kong appeared in only two out of the six Spontaneous Escapes deals during the second half of 2019, despite significantly higher seat capacity on the route at the time.
This trend points to weak travel demand between Singapore and Hong Kong, a city that endured some of the world’s strictest travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hong Kong only finally removed the last of its testing requirements for travellers in April 2023, a year after Singapore fully reopened its borders.
Hong Kong International Airport’s passenger traffic in 2025 remained 15% below 2019 levels, while Singapore Changi’s was back above pre-COVID levels from the first quarter of 2024.
Highlighting this sluggish recovery, the Singapore-Hong Kong route even witnessed what must be one of Changi Airport’s shortest-lived passenger services in 2024, when Greater Bay Airlines discontinued its new non-stop flights after just one month, citing “commercial reasons after considering the latest market situations”.
SIA has still not programmed a return of its SQ1/2 Singapore – Hong Kong – San Francisco flights since these were suspended in January 2022, when Hong Kong banned transit passengers.
(Photo: Plane’s Portrait Aviation Media / Malcolm Lu)
We were hoping to see a return for this popular service by now, but it has not materialised, and it’s unclear what the airline’s future intentions are for the historic link.
Top 15: Business Class
Most of our readers are accruing KrisFlyer miles for one of the best value redemptions they offer – a Business Class award ticket on Singapore Airlines.
It’s therefore interesting to take a look at the carrier’s current top 15 routes based solely on Business Class seat capacity, as this too has shifted not only due to changes in flight frequencies but also the deployment of different aircraft types over the last few years.
Here’s how cities on the Singapore Airlines network rank in terms of one-way Business Class seat capacity from Singapore, and how that compares to 2019 levels.
| Busiest Routes by Weekly Business Class Seat Capacity (December 2026) |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | City | J Seat Capacity |
vs. pre-COVID |
| 1 | Jakarta | 2,716 | 3% |
| 2 | London | 2,310 | 41% |
| 3 | Sydney | 1,988 | 1% |
| 4 | Bangkok | 1,848 | 31% |
| 5 | Melbourne | 1,736 | 3% |
| 6 | Tokyo | 1,484 | 28% |
| 7 | Hong Kong | 1,470 | 37% |
| 8 | Shanghai | 1,414 | 4% |
| 9 | Kuala Lumpur* | 1,348 | 5% |
| 10 | New York | 1,274 | 43% |
| 11 | Beijing | 1,148 | 5% |
| 12 | Brisbane | 1,134 | |
| 13 | Manila | 1,078 | 5% |
| 14 | Perth | 1,064 | |
| 15 | Seoul | 1,036 | 10% |
* Comparison vs. pre-COVID includes former SilkAir flights
If you’re finding it difficult to secure Business Class awards to and from Tokyo lately – it’s hardly surprising. With only 83% of its pre-COVID flight frequencies now operating to and from the Japanese capital, and overall seat capacity down 17%, Business Class capacity is down by more than a quarter (28%) compared to pre-COVID.
This shift is due to the airline previously operating larger aircraft on this route, such as the Airbus A380 (with 60 or 86 Business Class seats) and the Boeing 777-300 (with 50 Business Class seats). These have since been replaced by smaller aircraft on Tokyo flights, including the Boeing 787-10, which offers just 36 Business Class seats.
(Photo: The Points Guy)
On the flip side, additional frequencies to London, New York and Bangkok mean SIA is offering significantly more Business Class seats in these markets than before the pandemic (up 41%, 43% and 31% respectively) – though of course that doesn’t always mean Saver award seats are easy to come by, especially to London and New York.
Again Hong Kong stands out like a sore thumb – with 37% fewer Business Class seats now offered by SIA compared to 2019.
Hong Kong had SIA’s second-highest Business Class seat capacity of any route in 2019 – now it languishes in seventh place.
SIA’s latest network
We recently completed our analysis of Singapore Airlines’ full passenger flight network between now and late March 2027, covering the northern winter scheduling season.
You can also see which aircraft types and Business Class seat types the carrier is flying by route and individual flight number at our popular and continually updated analysis page.
It’s also worth noting that the airline has added service to Brussels, London Gatwick, Beijing Daxing, Hangzhou, Madrid and Western Sydney airports in recent years, none of which were served by the carrier immediately prior to the pandemic, though Houston got the chop in early 2025, Dubai remains suspended and Riyadh’s relaunch keeps getting pushed back.
Summary
Singapore Airlines has now restored its network to pre-COVID scale, with weekly departures at 99.9% of December 2019 levels and seat capacity at 102%, though the recovery is far from even, with some routes still lagging behind and some significantly exceeding pre-pandemic capacities.
Jakarta remains the carrier’s busiest route by both weekly seat capacity (16,443 each way) and flight frequency (63 weekly return flights), but Bangkok and London show impressive growth, with additional frequencies.
However, Hong Kong and Tokyo lag well behind, with significantly lower capacity than in 2019 – in Hong Kong’s case likely reflecting weaker demand, partly due to the city’s prolonged pandemic-related restrictions.
SIA’s top routes by Business Class seat capacity show Jakarta leading, followed by London and Sydney. Some routes – like Tokyo and Hong Kong – have significantly reduced Business Class capacity on offer, due to fewer flights and smaller aircraft replacing larger ones.
However, London and New York now offer over 40% more Business Class seats than in 2019, thanks to additional flights.
(Cover Photo: Maxim Grohotov / Shutterstock)