(Yicai) June 8 -- Flag carrier Singapore Airlines has introduced a daily service to Hangzhou, the capital of China’s Zhejiang province, betting on strong demand supported by visa-free travel, growing outbound travel, and Singapore’s role as an international transfer hub.

With the addition of the Singapore-Hangzhou service, SIA now operates 112 weekly flights between the Southeast Asian city state and the Chinese mainland, including five daily flights to Shanghai, surpassing the pre-pandemic level of 91.

The new service’s inaugural flight departed from Singapore at 5.40 p.m. on June 1 and landed on time at 10.50 p.m. The return flight left Hangzhou at 12.10 a.m. the next day, arriving at 5.10 a.m. back in Singapore.

Four other carriers were already operating Singapore-Hangzhou services, Zhou Jie, general manager of Hangzhou Airport, told Yicai. Since the start of this year, passenger traffic between the two cities has grown 12 percent to about 85,000, he added.

“The Chinese outbound travel market is maintaining growth momentum, with demand for cross-border business and leisure trips steadily expanding,” said Dai Haoyu, SIA’s senior vice president for market planning. “In the year ended March 31, SIA Group carried over four million passengers between the Chinese mainland and Singapore, up 8.1 percent from the previous fiscal year.”

Passenger capacity on China-Singapore routes has recovered to 115 percent of pre-pandemic levels, compared with just 59 percent for China-Thailand routes. China and Singapore’s mutual visa-free travel arrangement, which took effect in February 2024, has been a major factor behind the continued growth in travel between the two countries.

The number of Chinese mainland visitors to Singapore soared 126 percent to 3.08 million in 2024 from the year before, accounting for 19 percent of the country’s total inbound tourism and pushing China back into first place -- ahead of Indonesia -- as Singapore’s biggest source of tourists, according to the Singapore Tourism Board.

Twenty to 30 percent of passengers on SIA’s flights to China are in transit from Australia and other SE Asian countries via Singapore, Dai said, adding that through SIA Group’s network, transit passengers can reach 42 destinations across SE Asia and the Southwest Pacific region.

SIA’s inaugural flight to Hangzhou carried two tour groups from Indonesia and Malaysia. On the return leg, an Indonesian tour group was aboard, having entered China via Beijing through Singapore before touring southward across the country and departing from Hangzhou.

Editor: Futura Costaglione