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SIA to launch non-stop flights between S'pore and San Francisco, 2nd daily Los Angeles service

SINGAPORE — Starting Oct 23 this year, Singapore Airlines (SIA) will have daily non-stop flights between Singapore to San Francisco, the national carrier announced on Thursday (June 16).

A Singapore Airlines A350-900 plane. Photo: Singapore Airlines

A Singapore Airlines A350-900 plane. Photo: Singapore Airlines

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SINGAPORE — Starting Oct 23 this year, Singapore Airlines (SIA) will have daily non-stop flights between Singapore to San Francisco, the national carrier announced in a statement on Thursday (June 16).

The flights will be on SIA's latest A350-900 planes and will be the longest flights in SIA’s network until 2018  — when a new variant of the A350-900 will enter service, enabling even longer flights between Singapore and both Los Angeles and New York. Flying time for the new Singapore-San Francisco services will be between 14 hours 35 minutes and 17 hours 45 minutes depending on the direction and time of the year.

SIA says the flights will be "conveniently timed" to depart Singapore in the morning and arrive in San Francisco also in the morning to enable onward connections to other destinations. Return flights from San Francisco will also depart in the morning, arriving in Singapore in the early evening.

The A350-900 is able to operate non-stop San Francisco flights on a year-round basis, although there may be some payload restrictions due to headwinds, which will result in some seats not being offered for sale, said the airline. 

SIA added that there will be 253 seats in Business Class, Premium Economy Class and Economy Class on the Singapore-San Francisco flight.

Currently, SIA serves the Singapore-San Francisco route twice-daily, with one flight operating via Hong Kong and the other via Seoul. In its statement on Thursday, SIA said it would be adding a second daily service to Los Angeles, to complement existing flights that operate on a Singapore-Tokyo Narita-Los Angeles routing. This route comes as the current Singapore-Seoul-San Francisco flight will be re-routed to operate as a Singapore-Seoul-Los Angeles service, also from Oct 23.

“Our customers have been asking us to offer more US services and we are pleased to be able to do so," said SIA's Senior Vice President, Marketing Planning, Ms Lee Wen Fen. "With new non-stop San Francisco flights and the increase in frequency to Los Angeles, customers will have two flights to choose from each day to both of these popular US West Coast destinations."

The new Singapore-San Francisco flights mark SIA's first non-stop service to the US since late 2013, when the national carrier retired its Airbus A340-500 fleet, which had only 100 business-class seats.

"Nonstop operations are critical for us," said Mr James Boyd, a spokesman for SIA in New York, to Bloomberg. "They are a staple for corporate travel that we've served for many years."

United Airlines was the first to launch a non-stop flight between Singapore and San Francisco on June 1 this year. That service is on a Boeing 787-900 Dreamliner aircraft.

In its statement on Thursday, SIA also said that it will be suspending services to Sao Paulo, Brazil, from Oct 21, "as a result of the sustained weak performance of the route". SIA currently operates three weekly flights to Sao Paulo via Barcelona. Services between Singapore and Barcelona will continue to run.

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