SINGAPORE, Jan 29 — A new non-stop flight between Singapore and San Francisco will allow travellers to save up to four hours on their journey, said the Changi Airport Group (CAG) today.

The service, flown by United Airlines, will be launched on June 1 with flight UA1, which will depart San Francisco at 11.25pm (San Francisco time) and arrive in Singapore 16 hours and 20 minutes later, at 6.45am (Singapore time) on June 3.

Its return flight, UA2, will depart Singapore on June 3 at 8.45am (Singapore time) and arrive in San Francisco 15 hours and 30 minutes later, at 9.15am (San Francisco time) the same day.

CAG said that the timings of the service were designed to meet the needs of business travellers and to support onward connectivity.
Passengers currently flying to San Francisco on United Airlines are required to stop over at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. The airline has announced that its service between Singapore and Tokyo will be discontinued on June 2, following the launch of the new service.

The service will be flown on United Airlines’ Boeing 787-900 Dreamliner aircraft in a two-class configuration and will be able to accommodate 252 passengers. The service will mark the world’s longest flight flown on the aircraft type and the longest regularly scheduled flight operated by an American carrier.

“(The new service) will bring greater convenience especially to business travellers, who can use United’s hub in San Francisco to connect to 26 major US cities, such as Seattle, Las Vegas and Denver. The new service would also potentially bring more US tourists to Singapore,” said Mr Lim Ching Kiat, CAG’s Senior Vice President, Market Development.

He added that CAG was working with airlines to introduce more non-stop flights linking Singapore and the United States.

Currently, no other airlines offer such a service. Singapore Airlines announced last October that it planned to resume non-stop flights between Singapore and the United States in 2018, upon delivery of its new Airbus A350 aircraft. The carrier had previously offered a non-stop service linking Singapore and Newark, but this was discontinued in 2013. ―TODAY