Singapore Airlines (SIA) will start daily, non-stop flights over the Arctic to New York from June 28, making it the world’s longest commercial flight.
It will use Airbus’ new long-range aircraft — the A340-500 — for the 16,600km flight, which lasts 18 hours.
SIA had previously set the record for the longest commercial flight earlier this year with non-stop 16-hour flights from Singapore to Los Angeles — a distance of 14,762km.
With the new service, SIA will increase its flight frequency to New York from the current 11 flights each week to 14 flights weekly, including the one-stop service via Frankfurt, Germany.
But its one-stop service via Amsterdam, which operates four times a week, will be discontinued.
The new long-range Airbus aircraft has enabled SIA to make full use of Singapore’s 1997 open skies agreement with the United States. Until earlier this year, SIA’s flights to the US had to stop in a third country along the way which meant that each time the airline added a new American destination, extra landing rights had to be negotiated with that country.
The new plane allows SIA to consider flying to as many American destinations as it can viably support.
By: greekdude1 - 6th May 2004 at 16:39
Is that going to be your first Ted flight, gd?
No, I’ve actually already flown on 1 TED segment (ONT-DEN) en route to FLL. I have another 2 coming up May 21-23. (SFO-LAS, LAS-SFO) and another 2 a fortnight later (LAX-LAS, LAS-LAX). They’re not bad. Comparable to most lo-co’s, but they have economy plus and I get the emergency exit rows when I make my reservation. 😀
By: Bhoy - 6th May 2004 at 11:37
Is that going to be your first Ted flight, gd?
By: greekdude1 - 5th May 2004 at 17:14
All the legs on Star Alliance?
Yes sir! I Redeemed 80,000 miles for a business class round trip ticket to Europe. I’m doing ONT-DEN-IAD-JFK on UA then JFK-FRA on SQ and FRA-AMS on LH. By the discontinuation of SQ23 EWR-AMS, (which was just a continuation of SIN-AMS-EWR) due to this new non-stop SIN-EWR service, it added 2 more segments to my outbound (originally it was going to be ONT-DEN-EWR-AMS with the last leg being operated by SQ). When I booked my trip, the Star Alliance timetable had the EWR-AMS service operating until July 23rd, to which it would be replaced by the non-stop service thereafter. Seeing as I was leaving on July 21st, I would be flying on one of the last services. Apparantly, they moved up the launch date of the non-stop service to late June, which is why they switched me over to SQ25 JFK-FRA, so I had to get to JFK instead of EWR, and then go from FRA to AMS on LH. On the return journey, my itinerary wasn’t affected because we had already anticipated SQ not not having the AMS-EWR segment anymore, so I just had the travel agent do AMS-IAD-DEN-ONT, all on UA. The only segments out of this whole itinerary that won’t be in business will be the ONT-DEN-ONT legs because those are now TED flights, which are all economy. 😡
By: Hand87_5 - 5th May 2004 at 16:22
This service was set to start in late July, but now they are bumping it up. I had booked an itinerary and was scheduled to fly from EWR to AMS on SQ23 on July 21st. When I went to ticket it, they had re-booked me onto SQ25 from JFK-FRA, but I didn’t have connections in either city. I asked the UA travel agent why they did that, but they didn’t know. I had to re-do my whole itinerary, but I didn’t care. I’m just flying more segments now (5) on the outbound into AMS.
All the legs on Star Alliance?
By: greekdude1 - 5th May 2004 at 16:16
greekdude1-
Oy. They should know.
What? Who should know?
By: starjet - 4th May 2004 at 11:58
greekdude1-
Oy. They should know.
Nonstop at last!
By: greekdude1 - 4th May 2004 at 08:06
This service was set to start in late July, but now they are bumping it up. I had booked an itinerary and was scheduled to fly from EWR to AMS on SQ23 on July 21st. When I went to ticket it, they had re-booked me onto SQ25 from JFK-FRA, but I didn’t have connections in either city. I asked the UA travel agent why they did that, but they didn’t know. I had to re-do my whole itinerary, but I didn’t care. I’m just flying more segments now (5) on the outbound into AMS.
By: KabirT - 4th May 2004 at 07:05
its good that they will only have executive economy (?). 18 hours in normal economy will be horific.
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May 4, 2004 at 4:32 am