Singapore Airlines Pushes Riyadh Back to March 2027

The Business Times on Friday, carrying a Bloomberg story, listed Singapore Airlines with IndiGo, Air India, and Philippine Airlines, which had halted Riyadh flights after strikes on Saudi airports. SIA had no Riyadh departure on that board.

The airline last flew the Saudi capital in 2014. On February 2 it said it would return on June 2, four times a week. AeroRoutes, which logs schedule filings, recorded the new start on October 7: SQ498 and SQ499 from March 28, 2027. Mainly Miles, a Singapore site that follows this timetable, has the seats on sale from February 10, and lists the dates this one replaces: June 2, September 1, and December 1.

A winter seat was sold against that December date. December is the date that moved.

February’s release specified the medium-haul Airbus A350-900: 40 seats in business class and 263 in economy. SQ498 leaves Singapore at 6:20 p.m. and lands in Riyadh at 9:45 p.m. SQ499 leaves Riyadh at 11 p.m. and reaches Changi at 12:15 p.m. the next day. Westbound, that is about eight and a half hours. AeroRoutes shows those same times on the March flights.

The original week was Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Mainly Miles puts the next change on July 16. Saturday came off the winter schedule, and four flights a week were still planned from March 28. The October update takes Saturday out of next summer too. The route is Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.

Losing Saturday cuts the summer plan by a quarter. Three flights a week is 120 business seats and 789 economy seats in each direction. The four-flight version was 160 and 1,052. Lee Lik Hsin, SIA’s chief commercial officer, was announcing four flights in June, tied to Riyadh’s business growth and to trips onward with partner airlines. The schedule now is three flights at the end of March.

A ticket dated from December 1 through March 27 no longer matches a flight in the published timetable. A Saturday ticket from March 28 onward is off it too.

SIA’s October 1 advisory, which CNA, the Singapore broadcaster, reported that day, cancels Dubai flights SQ494 and SQ495 through December 1. Customers on those flights can have the unused portion refunded. If Singapore Airlines sold the ticket, the form is on its site. If an agent or another carrier sold it, the request goes through them.

The advisory does not mention Riyadh. Mainly Miles treats a Riyadh ticket on the dropped dates as refundable on those Dubai terms, and expects KrisFlyer bookings to be offered a rebooking or the miles back. That is the site’s expectation, not a line in the alert. Open Manage Booking, ask with the flight number, and keep the phone number on the reservation current.

Scoot, SIA’s low-cost subsidiary, cancelled Jeddah flights TR796 and TR797 through December 2 in a notice dated September 30. CNA reported that the next day, with SIA’s Dubai advisory. A July version of the advisory had SQ494 and SQ495 cancelled through October 24. The October 1 version extends those two flights through December 1. If Dubai operates on December 2, it is back almost four months before Riyadh. Mainly Miles also has the route switching from the two-class A350 to a four-class Boeing 777-300ER on March 28, the morning Riyadh is supposed to start. Treat the December 2 restart and that aircraft change as the current timetable.

This week’s strikes are a booking problem if your flight was on the board. Bloomberg’s account was about attacks on two Saudi airports. Cirium, the flight-data firm, counted about 300 cancellations at Riyadh’s King Khalid airport on Thursday, mostly Saudia and the budget carrier flynas. Philippine Airlines’s Riyadh pause ran at least through October 11. Cathay Pacific’s Dubai and Riyadh cancellations, in that same account, run through January 31. If one of those tickets is yours, recheck it.

If the trip is Riyadh before late March, this timetable does not include it. Dubai before December 2 is still inside the cancellation. Look again before you plan around March 28. That date has already moved three times.