It’s really happening, officially!
Start spreading the news! They want to be a part of it (again) – New York, New York. The world’s longest flight has just received an official relaunch date, bringing 18+ hour direct flights between New York and Singapore back, for the first time since 2013 – but this time, on state of the art new aircraft. Singapore Airlines has just teased an official launch date, making speculation about a reboot of the world’s longest flight into finite reality.
The Big Date
Singapore Airlines has announced that the first non stop flights between Singapore Changi and New York’s Newark Airport will commence October 11th, 2018. The route will initially operate three days a week, with flights from Singapore on Monday, Thursday and Sunday. Beginning October 18th, Singapore will roster a second A350-900ULR to the route, making it into a daily offering. Flights from Singapore will depart at 11:45PM, with a New York arrival time of 6:00AM, just in time for a day in the office. Newark to Singapore return flights will depart New York at 10:45AM, arriving in Singapore at 5:30PM, allowing for a day out of the office to recover!
The Plane
The Airbus A350-900ULR is the longest range passenger aircraft in history. The magnificent new plane boasts a range of 9,700 nautical miles (11,155 miles), which beats the current longest flight records by over 2,000 nautical miles. Vanquish may be a more appropriate word! Singapore Air will operate the world’s longest rebooted flight with a configuration of premium economy and business class only, saving passengers the thought of what 19 hours in economy just might feel like. Phew. The aircraft will feature 69 business class and 94 premium economy seats in 1-2-1 and 2-4-2 layouts, respectively. The A350 family of aircraft is renowned for jet lag reducing technologies, and improved cabin pressure, leaving passengers feeling as refreshed as possible, considering they’ve spent 19 hours in a composite tube.
The Potential
9,700 nautical miles create potential for some serious longest flight jockeying over the next two years. The new Singapore to New York service leaves 1,500nm of range in the tank for the Airbus A350-900ULR, and word on the street suggests Qantas is eyeing up a London to Sydney direct flight, as well as New York to Sydney. Needless to say, saving points or working for a corporation that believes in comfortable travel expenditure is going to be quite important, if you’d like to secure one of these coveted seats.
It will be interesting to what the price of a ticket will be . Would love to have a trip this long .
I’m possibly interested in this one, but have been thinking about going through Frankfurt with a stopover as well. Any idea how tight award space will be? Also, I looked at the Singapore award charts, and is it just me or is it strange that they charge less for awards on their flights in conjunction with partner flights than on their flights alone? In theory the way I read it, I could fly SIN SQ FRA LH X/ORD UA DEN for less miles than SIN SQ EWR in the same class of service on the nonstop on Singapore metal. The more flights with more distance for less miles doesn’t seem to make sense. What am I missing?