SFO-SIN Route Performance
 

I've flown this route a dozen times this year. I have no empirical data, but I'm thoroughly impressed with how well it's doing. It's always fairly full. R space is very hard to get. The 789 is a pleasure to fly, even in E+. I meet people going to Bangkok, Manila, Maldives, Jakarta, Chennai, Mumbai, KL and of course Singapore. They're adding the 2nd daily SIN-SFO flight in October (AM & PM) and hopefully PE & Real Polaris soon (not sure when). Once that happens, anyone who cares about any kind of lifetime status on UA will be hard pressed to give up the 17K+ BIS miles and fly SQ. UA may have found another TLV here...

I just flew this route SIN-SFO on Monday. I, too, like it and use it several times a year. This time, Economy was only about 60% booked, so most of the middles were open. I agree that 789 in E+ is very nice. My flight was perfect.

Israel is sometimes referred to as the Singapore of the middle east...

but in general, SIN has historically been hard to get to due to how darn far away it is, the longer range (and more efficient) aircraft help that. Given there is a strong financial sector as well as high tech and research there, its not too surprising, but nice to see of course!

I just flew LAX->SIN a week ago. FAs weren't thrilled it was going away.

The flight was very empty - almost the entire E+ section had 3 seats to themselves.

It was one the few times I managed to get some sleep on a plane in E.

Exactly! And given the SF market is 1/3 the size of LA, and the fact that SFO loads are much better, highlight the importance of the feeder network into SFO. Once they move the LA route to SF, it's going to be a very powerful AM/PM punch into SE Asia for UA.

I would suggest it highlights equally the impact of (i) UA's dominance at SFO, particularly of corporate traffic, and (ii) the amount of Asia travel the bay area economy generates. The bay area is certainly considerably smaller than the LA metro area, but it's still a market of over 8 million people and one of the wealthiest and most economically vibrant on the planet.

Yes, all good points.

BTW, someone told me a FA has to do 75 hours a month. If that's true, two LAX-SIN flights and your basically done for month. Rest of the month off. Amazing....

Singapore is a great layover, too. Perfect city for a day and a half.

UA will do even better on this route when it has Polaris seats on the 789. Now if only they would do some serious codesharing with SQ . . . .

You're more likely to see SFO based pax connecting via LAX due to cheaper fares and/or R availability. UA's pulling a substantial premium for the SFO nonstop compared to LAX and you almost never see advance R. I'm sure that pattern - SFO based pax flying via LAX - was one of the factors that led them to shift the LAX flight to SFO.

I've flown SFO-LAX-SIN twice, SFO-SIN, never. Once because I was able to confirm R, once because the P fare was about $500 less if I connected via LAX.

There is a hell of a lot of high tech/bio-tech traffic between the bay area and SIN, and I don't doubt that UA can run a very profitable flight on this route. However, as SQ continues to fly more comfortable aircraft (A350 with PE and better Y and J seats) and as it adds this very month (October) flights to LAX and EWR, and ups its flights ex-SFO to 10x week (27 total from the three airports) it will clearly impact UA's bottom line.

UA is able to pull traffic via SFO because their is no other good one stop service to SIN from most other cities, but SQ will provide direct competition via two gate ways on the west coast, and will provide a vastly superior experience ex-NYC area. Some if not most of the high value traffic from the East (BOS/NYC, etc) that UA is currently getting for the SFO-SIN flight will go away.

It will be interesting to see if UA cuts back to a daily flight (from two) as SQ ramps up its expanded service with better soft and hard product.

SNA for sure. Also SAN. When I was flying the SAN-SFO evening flights regularly it was normal to have multiple pax connecting to SIN.