Emirates has made a request to terminate its operations on the flight route between Singapore and Melbourne, Australia, stopping all long-haul flights between the two cities.

In response to queries by Mothership, Emirates said on Sep. 8 that the airline will determine the termination date after receiving a final assessment from Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS).

Commitment with Qantas

The assessment will detail the impact of being released from its capacity commitments that were set out in an alliance with Qantas.

It will no longer be flying its own planes between Singapore and Australia.

However, the airline added that it will offer direct flights between Melbourne and Singapore via codeshare partner Qantas.

Codesharing refers to a co-operative arrangement whereby airlines carry passengers whose tickets have been issued by another airline.

When booking a codesharing flight, the passengers' tickets will bear the flight number of the airline through which they booked their travel, although some legs of the trip will be on flights operated by another airline, and will bear a different flight number from the one printed on the ticket.

Request to terminate

In a press release dated Aug. 8, CCCS said Emirates had requested to terminate its operations on the route.

They have chosen to terminate the route due to the "highly competitive nature of services to and from Singapore", citing flights from the Singapore Airlines Group and Turkish Airlines, who have chosen to operate on the route in March.

Apart from Emirates, the Singapore-Melbourne route is currently being flown by Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Jetstar and Turkish Airlines.

Emirates operates one flight daily, while Qantas operates two flights, Singapore Airlines operates five, and Turkish Airlines, Jetstar and Scoot operate one flight each daily.

The Dubai-based airline previously applied to terminate flights between Singapore and Brisbane in 2019.

Top photo via mkjr_/Unsplash