United’s flight UA1 – from San Francisco to Singapore – resumed on January 5th. It is
currently the airline’s longest route, although that’ll change in March. While the Star Alliance
carrier has served Singapore for decades, historically via Hong Kong and Tokyo, it wasn’t
until 2016 that non-stop services began. Let’s take a closer look at this long-haul service…
United inaugurated the very long non-stop link from San Francisco to Singapore on June 1st,
2016. With a distance of 8,446 miles (13,593km), it is the USA’s eighth-longest non-stop service
this winter. It has a block time to Asia of 17 hours and 10 minutes,
but ‘just’ 14 hours and 40 minutes back because of the difference in wind direction.
The route currently operates four times-weekly with the following schedule.
(Note that all times are local). The outbound flight is UA1 from
San Francisco to Singapore. This departs at 22:30 and arrives at 07:40, two days later.
Returning to the states, flight UA2’s flight from Singapore to San Francisco,
departs at 10:10 and arrives at 08:50 the same day.
The frequency of this service will rise to once-daily from early March
and – somewhat optimistically – twice-daily from March 26th,
the last day of the aviation winter season. The service will compete head-to-head with up to
two daily flights by Singapore Airlines. Which airline would you prefer to fly?
United’s flight uses the 257-seat 787-9, which features the airline’s latest Polaris business
class seat and its premium economy product, Premium Plus. Over a quarter of the total
seats are Polaris and Premium Plus. There are just 147 seats in regular economy.
According to the USA’s Department of Transportation’s T-100 dataset,
some 303,732 round-trip passengers used this United non-stop route in 2019.
It had a seat load factor of 84%, which is about the carrier’s system-wide average for the year.
Booking data suggests that about 73% of passengers (222,000) transited San Francisco,
United’s Asia-Pacific hub. Singapore to Houston Intercontinental was the
most-trafficked origin and destination (O&D). Following this were Toronto,
Chicago O’Hare, Washington Dulles, Los Angeles, Newark, San Diego, Austin, Denver, and Las Vegas.
Singapore-Houston’s dominance was despite Singapore Airlines’ one-stop service to the Texas
airport via Manchester, which resumed in December 2021. Los Angeles was the fifth-largest O&D,
with United ending Los Angeles-Singapore non-stop in October 2018 after a year.
Instead, it increased San Francisco-Singapore to twice-daily on October 27th, 2018.
This month, San Francisco-Singapore is United’s longest non-stop route by distance,
ahead of Newark to Johannesburg, Newark-Cape Town, Newark-Mumbai, and San Francisco-Delhi.
However, things will change in March, when Houston to Sydney returns, pushing UA1 to
second-longest. On October 28th, San Francisco to Bangalore is expected to commence, reducing
UA1 to third-longest. This route was supposed to start in May but has recently been delayed.
What transpacific routes have you flown? Share your memories and experiences in the comments.