Originally Posted by
ContinentalFan
I’m glad someone discovered this thread.
I became a huge fan of LAX/SIN and SFO/SIN just to get LT status. I loved LAX/SIN and was sorry to see it go. I too noticed that LAX/SIN was always a little lighter than SFO.
It was also the case that UA needed four aircraft (rounding up!) when they had two departure cities. Twice daily SFO/SIN could be managed, all else being equal, with three B789s. I’m grabbing at straws here because I’d love to see the LAX flight come back. Singapore had two daily flights from LAX for a while. What are the chances that the decision to by UA to abandon LAX was at least partially driven by better aircraft utilization with twice daily flights from SFO?
IMO, aircraft utilization probably had a fairly minor role in the decision to move the LAX-SIN flight to a second daily SFO-SIN. It's mainly about economics: UA simply has more pricing power at its fortress TPAC hub than it does at the hyper-competitive free-for-all that is LAX. The aircraft utilization benefit was probably the cherry on top.
As an Angeleno with family in SE Asia, of course I'd love to see LAX-SIN return (or LAX-HKG for that matter), but I'm not counting on it anytime soon.