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From left, Sidney Koh, CAAS director for air transport, and Armando Luis Daniel López, president of the Institute of Civil Aeronautics of Cuba.
SINGAPORE—The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) has signed a new air services agreement (ASA) with Cuba and expanded the scope of its agreements with the Dominican Republic, Kazakhstan, Seychelles and Switzerland.
The new ASA with Cuba allows the countries to operate air services without restrictions on capacity, frequency or routing. Singapore and Cuba only started diplomatic relations in 1997.
Meanwhile, Singapore's existing ASA with Kazakhstan has been upgraded to permit Kazakhstani and Singaporean airlines to carry passengers and cargo via any intermediate points and to any beyond points between the two countries, without restrictions on aircraft type, capacity or routing.
While the two countries currently do not have any air links, Kazakhstan is among the fastest-growing destination markets for Southeast Asian carriers, with AirAsia and VietJet Air among those to have introduced flights to the Central Asian state.
CAAS says the ASAs with the Dominican Republic, Seychelles and Switzerland have been updated to “remove outdated regulations and facilitate business opportunities,” including allowing airlines to engage in intermodal codesharing arrangements with surface transport providers.
Of those three countries, only Switzerland is connected to Singapore via 14X-weekly flights Swiss International Air Lines and Singapore Airlines.
The ASAs were signed at the Air Services Negotiation Event 2024, which was held in Kuala Lumpur.
