Ending World’s Longest Nonstop Flight Adds Five Hours; “SIA got greedy. It became less popular when SIA configured the cabins to all-business, instead of the business-super economy mix when it was first launched. It’s pretty much a fuel tanker in the air”
October 24, 2013 Leave a comment
Ending World’s Longest Nonstop Flight Adds Five Hours
The end of the world’s longest nonstop commercial flight, a 19-hour slog between Singapore and New York, is bad news for Chia Teck Fatt. Passengers like Chia who are used to making the 9,000-nautical mile journey from Singapore to Newark, New Jersey, will instead fly to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport via Frankfurt starting next month, adding five hours to their journeys. Singapore Airlines Ltd. is stopping its services from Singapore to Newark with its all-business class four-engine Airbus SAS A340-500 after ending the second-longest flight from Los Angeles to the island city yesterday. “I’m looking for another way to travel to New York,” said Chia, after checking-in at the business-class lounge at Singapore’s Changi Airport dressed in casual pants, t-shirt, a jacket and loafers.With oil prices tripling in the last decade, the carrier struggled to ferry executives on the 100-seat flights profitably for the past nine years, a sign that the airline industry is once again putting profitability ahead of glamor. The iconic transatlantic flights with the supersonic Concorde were scrapped a decade ago. The shrinking of Wall Street firms and travel cutbacks after the global financial crisis have made it difficult for airlines to lure top-dollar clients.
“It didn’t make sense to continue,” said Siyi Lim, a Singapore-based investment analyst at OCBC Investment Research. “The plane burns a lot of fuel, but carries very few passengers,” he said about the Airbus A340-500 aircraft.
Sydney-Dallas
SQ 21 will touch down at Changi in the early hours of Nov. 25, ending the world’s longest direct service, Singapore Air said in an e-mail. The second-longest flight, between the city-state and Los Angeles, ended yesterday.
The Newark service is about 16,700 kilometers long, while the Los Angeles flight was more than 14,000 kilometers. The longest nonstop commercial flight by distance after the end of these two routes will be Qantas Airways Ltd.’s 13,800-kilometer flight from Sydney to Dallas. Qantas uses a Boeing Co. 747-400ER on that route, the Australian carrier said.
“With the current price of fuel, it’s virtually impossible to make money on ultra-long-haul flights,” said Singapore-based Brendan Sobie, chief analyst at CAPA Centre for Aviation.
A return ticket this week on the Singapore-Newark route costs as much as S$13,400 ($10,850), according to the airline’s website. Flights to JFK via Frankfurt cost up to S$10,700. Singapore Air’s spokesman Nicholas Ionides said the airline doesn’t provide financials for any of the routes it operates.
The airline’s shares fell 0.1 percent to S$10.37 in Singapore trading today. The stock has declined 3.5 percent this year. The carrier reports earnings Nov. 12.
Superjumbos
The airline will begin returning the 340-500s to Toulouse, France-based Airbus starting this month. The deal is part of the carrier last year ordering more superjumbo A380s, the world’s biggest passenger plane. Singapore Air uses the double-decker aircraft, also with four engines and with beds in first class, to fly to New York and Los Angeles through Frankfurt and Tokyo. The carrier has a fleet of 19 A380s.
Airbus halted production of the A340 in November 2011, less than 20 years after the aircraft’s commercial debut. That made it the planemaker’s shortest-lived aircraft program. The company sold 377 A340s, less than half the tally for the A330, with which it shared a production line, Airbus said on its website.
“While the price of fuel will have affected the cost of operating such ultra-long flights, the A340-500 has performed extremely well in service and has proven to be a firm favorite with passengers flying on these routes,” Sean Lee, a spokesman at Airbus, said in an e-mail.
In-Flight Movies
Overseas travelers flying into JFK face the longest customs waiting time for any airport in the U.S., with holdups as long as two hours, according to a September report by the Global Gateway Alliance.
“The Newark flight is so long that I can pretty much watch all the in-flight movies,” said Banjo Castillo, a director at Unilever Plc in Singapore after checking in at Changi. Castillo flies twice a year on this route.
Singapore Air started the world’s longest flight in June 2004 with 181 business and economy seats. Almost four years later it was converted to an all-business class configuration. The Los Angeles service, which started in May 2004, was also retrofitted in the same way.
“SIA got greedy,” said Shukor Yusof, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s in Singapore. “It became less popular when SIA configured the cabins to all-business, instead of the business-super economy mix when it was first launched. It’s pretty much a fuel tanker in the air.”
Steak, Salmon
Four pilots take turns to fly the plane for 19 hours while 14 cabin crew members look after the passengers. The flight takes off from Singapore at 10:55 a.m. and passengers are served three meals before it lands in Newark at 5:50 p.m. Newark time, the same day.
Passengers get to choose between dishes of rib eye steak and pan-seared escalope of salmon prepared by the airline’s international culinary panel of chefs.
Manpreet Singh Gill, 32, Singapore-based head of fixed income, currencies and commodities investment strategy at Standard Chartered Plc’s wealth management unit, says the non-stop flight boosts time spent at work or with family.
“Ultimately, travel time is the least productive,” said Gill. “The more time you add on the way, the further it keeps you from either working or being at home.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Kyunghee Park in Hong Kong at kpark3@bloomberg.net
Why the Longest Nonstop Flights Are Ending
Manpreet Gill, the Singapore-based head of fixed income, currencies, and commodities investment strategy at Standard Chartered’s(STAN:LN) wealth management unit, is preparing for a loss on one of his most valuable assets: his time. On Nov. 25, Singapore Airlines (SIA:SP) will stop its 100-passenger daily run from Singapore to Newark, N.J., the world’s longest nonstop commercial flight. After that, Singapore Air passengers such as Gill who are used to making the 19-hour slog in one sitting will have to fly to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport after a stop in Frankfurt—adding five hours to their journey. The carrier is stopping the all-business-class service on a four-engine Airbus A340-500 after ending the second-longest flight, from Los Angeles to the island city, on Oct. 22. The routes’ well-heeled flyers are not pleased. “The more time you add on the way,” says Gill, “the further it keeps you from either working or being at home.”
The demise of the two signature flights is the latest sign that the airline industry is putting profitability ahead of glamour. With oil prices tripling in the past decade, Singapore Air has struggled to ferry executives like Gill on the ultralong flights profitably for the past nine years. “The plane burns a lot of fuel but carries very few passengers,” says Siyi Lim, an analyst at OCBC Investment Research in Singapore. “It didn’t make sense to continue.”
The Newark service is more than 10,300 miles, while the Los Angeles flight was about 8,700 miles. The longest nonstop commercial flight by distance will now be Qantas Airways’ (QAN:AU) 8,575-mile flight from Sydney to Dallas, which uses aBoeing (BA) 747-400ER.
Scoring a boarding pass on the world’s longest flight doesn’t come cheap. A round-trip ticket in mid-October on the Singapore-Newark nonstop cost as much as S$13,400 ($10,850). Flights to JFK via Frankfurt are as much as S$10,700. Analysts say the nonstop price premium still wasn’t enough for an aircraft with so few seats. “With the current price of fuel,” says Brendan Sobie, chief analyst at CAPA Centre for Aviation in Singapore, “it’s virtually impossible to make money on ultralong-haul flights.” Singapore Air spokesman Nicholas Ionides says the airline doesn’t provide financials for its routes.
Singapore Air started the Newark flight in June 2004 with 181 business and economy seats. Almost four years later it was converted to a 100-seat all-business-class configuration. The Los Angeles service, which started in May 2004, was likewise retrofitted. That higher-fare, lower-volume pricing strategy worked fine during the boom. But when the economic crisis hit, many financial companies—key customers for long-haul carriers—trimmed their ranks. Remaining staffers were encouraged to travel less often and less luxuriously. Current demand for premium-class travel remains below the level seen before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Singapore Air “got greedy,” says Shukor Yusof, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s (MHFI) in Singapore. “It became less popular when SIA configured the cabins to all-business, instead of the business-super-economy mix when it was first launched.” Rising jet fuel prices made matters worse. Fuel, the largest single expense for Asian airlines, accounts for about 40 percent of their total costs. When Singapore Air started its first nonstop to Los Angeles in 2004, the price of Brent crude, a popular benchmark, was $28.88 a barrel. Today it’s about $107. To carry enough fuel onboard to power a plane from Southeast Asia or Australia to North America means carrying fewer seats than on ordinary routes to reduce weight. “It’s pretty much a fuel tanker in the air,” Yusof says.
The airline began returning the 340-500s to Airbus in October, as part of a deal struck last year in which the carrier ordered more superjumbo A380s, the world’s biggest passenger plane. Singapore Air uses the double-decker aircraft, which also has four engines but can carry as many as 471 passengers in three classes, to fly to New York and Los Angeles through Frankfurt and Tokyo. The carrier has a fleet of 19 A380s.
Airbus (EAD:FP) halted production of the A340 in November 2011, less than 20 years after the aircraft’s commercial debut. That made it the planemaker’s shortest-lived aircraft program. The company sold 377 A340s, less than half the tally for the twin-engine A330. Airbus next year will begin deliveries of the A350, a more fuel-efficient long-range widebody that can carry 270 to 350 passengers and uses just two engines.
“While the price of fuel will have affected the cost of operating such ultralong flights, the A340-500 has performed extremely well in service and has proven to be a firm favorite with passengers flying on these routes,” Sean Lee, a spokesman at Airbus, said in an e-mail.
The bottom line: Singapore Air’s 10,300-mile nonstop from Singapore to Newark carries only 100 passengers, making it uneconomical.
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