Singapore Airlines A340-500 Service

Introduction

In March 2004 Singapore Airlines began operating direct flights from Singapore to Los Angeles and vice versa. This new service shatters the previous world record for longest regularly scheduled non-stop  commercial flights previously held by United and Continental for the New York - Hong Kong flights by a wide margin.

For the next three months, this route was the longest regularly scheduled non-stop commercial flight, until Singapore Airlines, in June 2004, broke their own records by operating direct flights from Singapore to Newark. Singapore Airlines, I believe, also made history by creating direct link between Eastern United States to South East Asia.

Singapore Airlines services, dubbed "A345 Leadership," hold both the longest and the second longest regularly schedule non-stop commercial flights. It will be a long time until these records will be broken, as there are no airlines nor profitable routes that can challenge these records.

This was made possible by the introduction of a new class of airplanes for ultra-long hauled flights. At the time of this writing, only one manufacturer provided such planes: Airbus Industrie's A340-500.

I had the opportunity to travel in both set of routes while each of them were the current world record:

This webpage is a photo album of my experience in these two flights. It also serves as a document (when needed) for these record breaking services.
 


Los Angeles - Singapore (May 27th, 2004)
 


 


Singapore - Los Angeles (June 6th, 2004)
 


 


Newark - Singapore (August 25th, 2004)
 

When Singapore Airlines began this service in June 2004, the original flight path was to go over the North Pole and then fly south through Siberia, Mongolia, China and the rest of South East Asia. For people traveling on this service with the original flight path, I am told that they were able to see the Arctic ice sheets.

However, since then Singapore Airlines decided to take advantage of the Eastward Jet Streams. The new path flies over Greenland, Northern Europe, Russia, Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, etc), India, and South East Asia.
 


 

Sunset Over Afghanistan


 


Singapore - Newark (September 4th, 2004)

When Singapore Airlines began this service in June 2004, the original flight path was to go over the North Pole and then fly south through Northern Canada. However, the original path was not followed. One would expect that the flight back is to go west, backward from EWR-SIN route. Instead, Singapore Airlines, again, took advantage of the Eastward Jet Stream by flying East. As a result, if one were to fly in this route as a roundtrip, one will be circumnavigating the world. In this case, around the world in ~36 hours!
 


 

Clouds Over Okinawa


 

Sunrise Over Alaska


 

New York, New York!!! It's a hell of a town!