United to be only U.S carrier to begin nonstop Singapore flights

United Continental has decided to further strengthen its San Francisco hub. The company announced that United Airlines will be launching nonstop flights between Singapore and San Francisco in June this year. The new route will be operated with the help of a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft.

United Airlines will now become the only airline in the United States to operate longest nonstop flights to Singapore from San Francisco. Presently, Delta Air Lines operates the longest nonstop route between Johannesburg and Atlanta, which will now be edged out by a few miles with United’s new service.

Travel experts said that the addition of the new San Francisco-Singapore route to United Airline’s network is a sensible decision to boost revenues with strong business traffic. Moreover, the route could become feasible because of Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft, which is considered to be fuel efficient and appropriate for flying long-haul routes.

Singapore is currently considered to be a major business hub in Asia-Pacific. The high-yielding route has many business customers ready to pay a premium amount for traveling between the United States and Singapore. The distance of Singapore is indeed quite long with more than 8,000 miles from the U.S. There are only few long range aircraft models to cover that much long distance. The new service will however curtail the flight duration by four hours.

It may be recalled that Singapore Airlines first starting nonstop flights to Los Angeles and Newark Liberty from Singapore in 2004. The Newark Liberty-Singapore and Los Angeles-Singapore were the only two longest routes in the world. The flights on both the routes were operated by the airline utilizing a special fleet of Airbus A340-500 aircrafts in an all-business class configuration with a total capacity of 100 seats on each aircraft. Both the routes were however dropped in 2013 despite a strong demand with load factors hovering around 75 percent. The airline said that the costs of operating the route was quite high because of the fuel-guzzling Airbus A340-500 aircrafts as the fuel cost during those time was also high.