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Singapore just dropped the mic on the world’s longest flight

a row of seats in an airplane

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It’s baaaaaaack

A brief history lesson: In 2004, Singapore Airlines announced SQ21/22, a direct flight on their A340-500 between Newark and Singapore, and vice versa. The interesting thing was SQ21 took longer to fly even though the SQ22 flight, SIN-EWR, was the longest flight in the world by distance. If you flew it roundtrip you could claim to have flown the two world record holders for “world’s longest flight.” Pretty cool, and like flying the Concorde, something you could no longer aspire to check off your bucket list after its last flight in 2013. Fuel cost ultimately deterred Singapore Airlines from continuing to operate the route, but that was alllll changed.

Meet the A350-900ULR – an all Premium Plane

Last year it was announced that Singapore Airlines ordered 7 ultra long range A350-900ULR aircraft. These new bad boys will be efficient enough to make the 19 hour route attractive to fly once again. We knew this flight was in the works, but they have now narrowed the timeline…and it’ll be operating come late 2018. They also announced that they will utilize the aircraft to fly from LA to Singapore in early 2019. How will they configure it? So glad you asked 🙂 The A350-900ULR will feature just 162 seats. 68 biz and 94 premium economy making it a fully “premium” plane.

This just tickles me silly. Singapore is one of my most favorite cities in the world, and knowing they’ll be direct flights from LA is pretty amazing, but what’s even cooler, is knowing I’ll have the option of flying the absolute world’s longest flight once again.

a seat in a plane
Singapore Airlines Business Class A350-900

Interested in using points to fly there?

The flights haven’t been loaded, and I’m sure saver seats will be hard to come by, but at some point they’ll peel them off. The cost? 92k Singapore Krisflyer.

a group of numbers in a row

Will you put this flight on your bucket list?

H/T The Sun

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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10 Comments

  • Damien April 28, 2018

    Isn’t the Dreamliner Boeing not Airbus

    • Miles April 28, 2018

      absolutely. mental fart, that’s been corrected.

  • Christian April 28, 2018

    Singapore can keep their planes pretty hot. Any idea if the new planes will be equipped with air nozzles?

    • Miles April 28, 2018

      It says that they will have a new airfiltration system and that will circulate every 2 minutes – not sure about the nozzles

      • Christian April 28, 2018

        So no dice, then. Well, maybe it’ll be different. It will be great to read a few reviews, partially because the regular A350 has a reputation for having poor legroom unless you’re in a bulkhead seat. If they fixed that, it would be amazing.

        • Miles April 28, 2018

          It’d be amazing if they were utilizing the new biz seat that can be joined for the double bed, but as far as I know, there hasn’t been any indication of which seat will be used.

  • Pav April 28, 2018

    On two occasions you have called it a Dreamliner. Why do you keep calling it a Dreamliner?!? if the reference is to an A350-900ulr?

    • Miles April 28, 2018

      Pav – ya dunno…i must be jetlagged 😉

  • Jeremy April 28, 2018

    Doesn’t United already fly from SFO & LAX to SIN on the 787?

    • Miles April 28, 2018

      yep! but it’s equipped with their old biz…if it had polaris I’d hop on it right now 🙂

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