I meant regional asian routes, plus closer Oz stations will see the non -ER 777s replaced by brand new A333s and will see B772-ERs "abused" for the same purpose, doing a mix of intra-asian rotations and long haul.
The 772-ER is the only remotely suitable aircraft for SQ and MAN presently, so there will be no change there.
Indeed. The A330's are going to BNE, PER, ADL, NGO etc initially.
The 772ER's have been 'abused' like that since they got them. They do short regional rotations during the day after coming in from a long haul and prior to going back out late at night. Out of 50+ SIN-SGN vv flights I've done, all but 3 have been on a SpaceBed equipped 772ER. I've even arrived in from MAN and gone on to SGN or in from SGN and on to MAN on the same a/c from the same gate a few times.
MAN has always been under pressure while the oil price kept going up. It's the longest nonstop 777 flight SQ did so the operating costs kept getting higher up to and over a tipping point. Even though oil is noe much cheaper, some idiot(s) at SQ have hedged 44% of their fuel at 131 US Dollars a barrel, hence the high surcharges that are still in place.
The really sad thing about SQ and MAN is we were very close to going to 9 or 10 rotations a week about 2 years ago, with a request in for a late departure Friday, Saturday and/or Sunday being seriously considered, but they didn't have the spare a/c due to the A380 delays.