AIR TRAVEL (Problem of Confirming Flights)

Dr Arthur Beng Kian Lam asked the Minister for Communications and Information if he will comment on reports that travellers have difficulties in getting confirmed flights to certain destinations and what has been done to resolve this problem.

The Minister for Communications and Information (Dr Yeo Ning Hong): Mr Speaker, Sir, in civil aviation, Singapore practises what is termed in the industry as the "open skies" policy. We actively seek to exchange air rights with other countries to provide passengers with the maximum choice and convenience of travel. However, not all countries practise this policy of free and open competition. It takes lengthy negotiations and considerable amount of time for air services agreements to be concluded. To date, we have a total of 67 air services agreements with other countries.

In recent years, there have been sharp increases in air travel wordwide. As a result of that, some routes and services are unable to cope with the increased demand. Some of the difficulties experienced recently in getting confirmed seats are for flights to Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The situation is especially acute during the peak periods of school holidays in Singapore in the months of June and November to February, when increasing numbers of Singaporeans and residents fly off to these countries for their holidays.

Fortunately, our active and continuous negotiations have been fruitful. In September last year, we reached agreement with Japan to add two more weekly flights from November 1987 and another two more weekly services from 1st April this year. We are scheduled to meet the Japanese authorities again sometime this year to discuss further capacity increases. Also in November 1987, Singapore and Australia agreed to increase capacity between the two countries by a total of seven weekly services from December 1987. We also had discussions with New Zealand last year to increase services between our two countries. Another round of negotiation is planned for the first half of 1988.

On top of the negotiations, CAAS also encourages airlines to mount supplementary flights. Where these flights exceed the provisions of air services agreements and where negotiations for more flights are not completed, CAAS has freely granted additional traffic rights. As an illustration, during the period of November 1987 to February 1988, CAAS approved a total of 264 supplementary flights between Singapore and Australia. These were mounted by Qantas and SIA.

CAAS also holds regular meetings with travel agents and airlines to monitor and determine when and where shortages may occur. The objective is to help airlines plan for such supplementary flights.

For the future, CAAS is exploring with civil aviation authorities in other countries the possibility of automatic increases in services should demand exceed certain trigger points or load factors. If such an approach is accepted, then services will match more closely the demands without undue delays resulting from prolonged negotiations.

Sir, while all these measures can help alleviate difficulties, passengers sometimes aggravate the situation by over-booking. For example, some passengers wanting a flight will book flights on several different days, or even several flights on different airlines on the same day. Quite obviously, this can result in bona fide travellers being left without seats because flights appear to be fully booked. Passengers can help by informing airlines of any change in their travel plans early, so that seats can then be allocated to others. With cooperation from all quarters, the problem of difficulty in securing flights out of Singapore can be resolved.