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.

If I had to guess the likelihood of this happening is low due to the ANA JV. Off the top of my head, I can only think of DPS as a notable hole in the ANA SE Asia network. Where UA and SQ should partner up is secondary Indian cities - apologies if we are saying the same thing but I think of India as a separate region from SE Asia.

and it is a gateway to the large & growing Indonesian market.

I don't disagree from UA's perspective, but from the passenger's perspective, SIN is an attractive connection point for most of SE Asia. And NH's use of regional aircraft on many routes longer than 5 hours is a big negative. The timing of the TYO flights is also an issue - if you're going to SE Asia, you get a late night arrival (from the US), and an early morning departure (back to US). While that works for some, others (including me) prefer the opposite.

As a practical matter, UA not codesharing with SQ can be the difference between flying UA or choosing another carrier (e.g., SQ, CX, or BR) that offers more attractive options to SE Asia. That's been my story this year.

Completely agree with this.

I've started taking a lot more risky UA + BR connections in TPE for this very reason. Even though it's a separate ticket, and I run the connection risk, it's USUALLY ok, and I can get to many SEAsia destinations a few hours earlier than via TYO. When that's the difference between getting to my hotel at 11pm or midnight, versus 1 or 2am, it's a fairly significant difference indeed!

They just don't play well together @:-)

There's a reason why SQ's codeshares in US are on AS and not UA ;)

Actually, SQ codeshares with UA on some domestic flights now (and possibly with B6 also? I seem to remember that). So, here's hoping the relationship is thawing. (The codeshares are ex-IAH, which is probably why they picked UA, but, still, baby steps. :)

Still, between UA preferring to put people on NH and SQ preferring to have people fly SQ metal TPAC, it's hard for me to see there being a huge market for UA codeshares on short-haul SQ flights (or for UA fares that allow the use of those same SQ flights; the codeshare isn't really necessary).

I think there's a business case on both sides - UA would pick up business that would otherwise fly other carriers TPAC, while SQ would pick up connecting traffic that would otherwise route through TYO on NH.

Not saying it will happen. The comment which sparked this discussion was aspirational, not predictive.

There will be 13 additional 787-9 scheduled to be delivered to UA from 2020 onwards.

Kind of curious to see how these get deployed - it doesn't seem like it will be quite in the window for the older 772 retirements, but 789 is too much plane for the routes plied by 763/764. I hope there are some new routes ^, although I'm sure part of it depends on the price of oil / distillates when they get delivered.

I'm not sure what that means. They are very close (esp 764) in seating capacity. While 789 has greater range, it's also an efficient aircraft and need not be used on ultra-long haul to be profitable. Other airlines (e.g., NH) are using it for medium range flights. (And UA already uses it on some of the 5-6k mile routes that can also be flown by 763/4).

Yikes! Looking to travel SFO-SIN Dec 15th - Jan 6th. The lowest fare on the non stop flight is approx $7.5k (the other option is $10k).

Don't recall it being this high in previous years(s).

I just don't see the business case for SQ to code share with UA in a major way (other than at a hub with no options). There is no steam of traffic that UA is going to feed into SIN that SQ can't already carry. No new markets open up for them that AS/B6 does not offer them. All UA would do would be to put someone into a SQ regional/shorter range flight off the long UA SFO-SIN flight, which (a) has lower profits, and (b) SQ could sell to directly. And given that UA has an incentive to route the traffic via the ANA JV, the rates that UA is going to give is not going to be favorable. The result is not much of a market, and one that would be cannibalizing from sales that SQ might otherwise get on own metal on the head to head SFO-SIN flights (or off the new new EWR/LAX flights).

And on the other end, SQ has no shortage of options (except at IAH, where they do code share) which is happy to take the feed and evidently offer a better deal than UA is.

If SQ were to fly into DEN or into ORD, Then i would expect them to code share, but not ex-SFO.

Just wanted to point out that even though UA isn't putting its code on SQ flights beyond SIN, the rules for some of the deep discount TPAC fares to some places covered by the ANA JV are allowing connecting through SIN on SQ and Jetstar (and I could've sworn I saw a third carrier, but can't remember/find it now, probably MI), combinable with the usual NH flights through NRT/HND.
example SFO-KUL: https://www.google.com/flights#flt=S...993*.USD.70993

Thanks; I've seen this once or twice but I wasn't sure if was still around. I guess there are a few routes where UA does find that it makes sense. :)

I know this is a slightly older thread, but I couldn't agree more! It's still going to be painful flying in economy. Unfortunately I wasn't able to fly this before the pandemic began. I'm glad I have some time to think because PY isn't available yet. Apparently regular economy seats have only 3 inches of recline? Whoa! :eek:

Others may feel differently, but I would not make any decisions based on lifetime status unless it was within reach in the next year or two. I certainly wouldn't choose UA in Y over SQ in PE for a 17 hour flight on that basis. (And in fact, I don't really see myself voluntarily flying that route in Y or PE - I'd find a way into J either on an award, via upgrade, or by purchasing a deep discount J fare.)

I'd disagree. I stumbled into LT status and now that I have it, I find myself more loyal to those brands than ever before. I think airlines realize this and won't dilute their LT programs.

As for SQ on this route, I think they're close to being done. Covid derailed UA's SFO assault on SQ.

- 2x daily HKG
- 2x daily SIN
- 1x daily DEL
- 1x daily BLR

Post-covid, those UA routes will return in force. Combined with SQ's financial woes, I'd expect SQ to kill the SFO-HKG 5th freedom and continue to regress from there.

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.

LAX-SIN J cabin was filled with 1Ks on GPUs. Great for upgrades, bad for revenue.
SQ was flying twice daily nonstops from LAX and SFO (though I don't think SFO was 7 days a week). They were also operating a connecting route to SIN from each.

They're at totally different price points. Obviously J would be a lot more comfortable no matter which airline you're on. I'm not a fan of SQ's program since their miles are hard coded to expire in like 3 years. As it was mentioned in another thread, PY isn't available on UA yet. I think that would be the bare minimum to survive a 17 hour flight.

UA is also suffering financially. What makes you think that SQ can't compete post-COVID? Both airlines have been raising billions over the past 10 months.