Singapore Airlines expands services into Cairns
More tourists will be able to fly into Far North Queensland from the 2024 Easter school holidays, with the start of Singapore Airlines A350 widebody services between Singapore and Cairns, further helping the region recover after a tough Christmas holiday period that was impacted by Tropical Cyclone Jasper.
There will be an increase in inbound seat capacity from the smaller 154 seat Boeing 737-8 to the widebody Airbus 350 which has 260 seats.
The expanded services will provide nearly 100,000 extra inbound seats over three years, generating an additional $108 million in overnight visitor expenditure and supporting up to 210 jobs.
The services are backed by the $200 million Attracting Aviation Investment Fund, which has now supported 29 services, delivering two million international inbound seats to Queensland and up to $1.82 billion in overnight visitor spending each year, supporting more than 21,000 jobs.
The Queensland Government provided a $100 million boost to the Fund in February 2022 to rebuild the visitor economy after Covid.
Other flights supported into Cairns include Virgin Australia’s Haneda (Japan) services and Jetstar’s services from Narita and Osaka (Japan), injecting over $473 million into the Cairns visitor economy over three years.
Read more about the Attracting Aviation Investment Fund.