Singapore Airlines to increase flights to California from Oct 23

Singapore Airlines is set to increase its frequencies to California from October this year. The airline said it will start operating new nonstop flights to San Francisco from Singapore starting from October 23, 2016. Newly acquired Airbus A350 aircrafts would be deployed to operate daily flights on the route.

Media reports said that Singapore Airlines would become the second airline to conduct flight services on Singapore-San Francisco route. Leading U.S. carrier United Airlines was the first to launch flights between the two destinations early June this year.

The Singapore-San Francisco route with a total distance of 13,593 km is said to be the world’s third longest route. The flight duration from Singapore would be nearly 16 hours, while the travel time of return flight would involve about 17 hours. According to the reports, this would be the longest flight to be conducted with the help of Airbus A350-900 aircrafts, which will be exclusively serving the travelers from Singapore to the United States. United Airlines is currently serving the route with the help of its Boeing 787-900 aircrafts.

Apart from the nonstop San Francisco-Singapore service, Singapore Airlines would be introducing a second flight between Los Angeles and Singapore via Seoul. This would be in addition to the airline’s existing daily flights to Los Angeles from Singapore via Tokyo Narita.

The airline’s move is aimed at resuming and boosting its capacity further into the U.S. market. Moreover, Singapore Airlines also considers the new daily flights to be of strategic importance and great opportunity to aggressively compete with United Airlines, which recently launched nonstop flights between Singapore and San Francisco at the start of June 2016. With the new nonstop flights, the weekly frequencies on the route would be increased to 47 from the existing 40. The airline’s total capacity to the United States would also modestly increase by 9 percent.