A significant event in Aviation History is happening
tomorrow. Some people know about it, but those people are generally ones like
me, who care about random facts and developments in civil commercial aviation.
Most people don’t know about it. Most people will not be in the least way
effected by what is happening tomorrow, but it still is significant. It is a
chapter in The Book of Aviation that is ending. Tomorrow, November 23rd,
2013, Singapore Airlines is ending their non-stop Singapore-Newark-Singapore flight.
Flight # SQ 21-22, for the past nine years since it was
installed, was the world’s longest flight. In fact, Singapore Airlines also,
for almost that entire period, ran the world’s 2nd longest flight, a
non-stop flight from Singapore to Los Angeles and back. That flight ended about
a month ago, and now this one is about to fly its final flight – chances are
the final one from Singapore to Newark is in the air right now. This flight is
flown by an Airbus A340-500. That particular plane, probably unknown to most,
is as important as the flight route that is ending, the final vestige of a
period in aviation where to fly as far as possible reigned supreme.
Most commercial aviation fanatics (the type of people that
populate the Airliners.net forum – which I frequent but don’t post on due to
their fee they charge) love this plane to an unhealthy level. In honesty, it is
an absolutely stunning bird. A magnificent plane, the most beautiful plane in
the sky. However, it is also a nightmare to run. Airlines have been getting rid
of this plane prematurely for years now. Singapore Airlines held onto them for
far longer than some of their competitors, running two legacy routes, but
finally the costs didn’t justify the means of flying the two longest flights in
the world.
30 Years ago, the longest flight in the world was from Los
Angeles to Tokyo. 15 years ago, that grew to Chicago to Hong Kong. Between that
time and even for a few years after, one of the biggest goals for Boeing and
Airbus was to develop planes that could increasingly connect further and
further city pairs. The Airbus A340-500 was supposed to end that fight and make
Airbus the winner. Airbus A340 directly competed with Boeing’s 777, and the
fact that the A340 had four engines gave it a huge leg up. First, it gave the
plane slightly more power, and the fact that it had four engines allowed it to
travel shorter routes that went over oceans, because back then there were
severe restrictions placed on two-engine aircraft as to how far away from a
potential emergency landing airport a plane could fly.
Over time, as Boeing developed sturdier, reliable two-engine
aircraft, those restrictions loosened, and two-engine aircraft could start
running the same routes that the four-engine aircraft could run. That leads to
the 2nd development that made Boeing’s 777 the ultimate winner: fuel
prices.
Rising fuel prices in the 21st Century made
running four-engine aircraft increasingly less profitable. Now that two-engine
aircraft could run the same routes (think any route from the US to
Tokyo/China/Korea, or routes from the US to the Middle East/India), there was
no need for a four-engine aircraft. But the A340-500 was different. It could go
further than any two-engine plane. It could run routes that no 777 could run.
That is what Airbus was betting on, and they lost – or more directly, the
airlines that believed them lost.
Ultra-Long Haul (ULH) travel is what those two flights were
deemed, as were a few other. And in the end what matters more than anything is
if people want to fly those flights. Are there enough people to fly from New
York to Singapore? In the end, not really. Singapore Airlines decided then to
cut that supply by making their A340-500 planes business class only, and while
they filled the plane, it still wasn’t profitable enough
to hold onto these unsellable planes. In the end, what killed ULH travel wasn’t
as much fuel prices as that people don’t really need to fly these routes.
There is a big debate going on at airliners.net (and other
related aviation blogs) as to whether these types of routes will be brought
back in the future, as Boeing and Airbus are developing planes that could fly
these routes. All of them are two-engine and more fuel-efficient than the
planes that came before them. The Boeing 787-9 can fly Singapore to Newark, and
that plane should be out late in 2014. The Airbus A350-900R and yet to be
manufactured but planned Boeing 777-9X could both potentially fly that and
similar routes and they’ll be out near the end of the decade or beginning of the
2020s. So, the capability will be there, but will those routes return?
Probably not. The demand just isn’t there. The demand for
New York to Singapore isn’t big enough to support a direct flight (there is a
flight that connects those two cities, but stops in Frankfurt – and as someone
who flew that flight the other way, very few people who came on board with me
in Singapore flew all the way to New York). There isn’t nearly enough demand to
support a direct flight from New York to Bangkok. Thai Airways, using an
A340-500, once flew that route. At the time, it was the 3rd longest
in the world behind the two Singapore Airlines’ ones. They had far less
patience, cutting it back in 2008.
The only ULH route that really has demand is Sydney to
London. That is the ultimate goal, to create a plane that could fly that route,
and none of these new planes can. In fact, most of the ‘next generation’ of
aircraft (Boeing 787, Airbus A350 families of planes) have less range than the
previous. Efficiency is replacing range, as airlines, due to rising fuel costs
and lack of demand, have decided that getting people from place to place more
efficiently is far more important than getting them as far as possible. For
years and years and years, getting people further and further was the fight
that both the airlines and the manufacturers were fighting. Airbus won the
manufacturer battle, and Singapore Airlines won it for airlines, but both
ultimately realized it wasn’t a flight really worth winning.
Spending 18 hours and 30 minutes is not appealing to most
people. It’s really not appealing to any person except for crazy ones like me.
I have come close to that, with my longest flight being the soon to be 11th-longest
in the world, a South African Airways flight between New York and Johannesburg.
That was about 15.5 hours. That was one of my most enjoyable flights in my
life, giving me enough time to get a good sleep and enjoy the plane flight
itself. Those flights are the ones I wanted to take. On my recent trip, I took
four flights that exceeded 10 hours (that one, Johannesburg-Bangkok,
Melbourne-Bangkok, Singapore-Frankfurt), but that was the only one that would
be classified as ULH, and I loved it.
I always wanted to take the flight from Newark to
Singapore. I wanted to be on that plane
for that long. My Dad took it once, years ago back in the route’s infancy,
before it became an all business class flight, before Singapore Airlines
realized it was fighting a losing battle. I’ll never get to take it unless
Singapore Airlines brings it back, but it won’t be on an Airbus A340-500. It
won’t be on the world’s most beautiful plane. It may never come back, and I
feel like if it ever does, it will be after a plane is built that could get
from Sydney to London, this making the Newark to Singapore flight not the
longest in the world.
I’ve been an aviation fanatic since I was a kid. I loved
airplanes, airlines and airports. My first real love of an airport was JFK
airport in New York. I was devastated when I was about 6 when my Uncle in
Chicago told me that O’Hare Airport was busier than JFK (and it wasn’t close
back then, it is somewhat closer now that many airlines have pulled out of
Newark and relocated to JFK, couple with the rise of JetBlue). I was mystified
when I found out that somehow, bizarrely Atlanta Hartsfield Airport was the
busiest in the world, and it has been for more than a decade now. I was excited
when I learned how to tell the difference between a Boeing 777-200 and a Boeing
777-300, and moreover the difference between a B777-300 and a Boeing 777-300ER
(the –ER has bigger, GE made engines). But nothing in aviation made me prouder
than when the airport closest to my home, little Newark Airport, that
international airlines were constantly pulling out of, making it more and more
a United-only airport, had the distinction of having the longest flight.
That will end tomorrow. That flight is gone. What is
replacing it as the world’s longest flight? A flight between Sydney and Dallas
(oddly, my family in Melbourne are taking this flight in three days, just
getting it after it becomes the longest in the world). That seems less fun.
Singapore to Newark just seems longer when you look at a globe. Singapore is so
far, the quickest way is to fly directly North from Newark, cross over the North
Pole, and fly directly South over Russia=>China=>Thailand and finally
down into Singapore. They don’t fly that way because of wind currents and other
stuff that is too complicated for even me to realize, but that is how the route
should be done.
The world is far bigger than most people understand, and to
think man made a device that could transport someone from two parts of the
world so vastly apart is staggering. Aviation came so far in 100 years (about
the time from the Wright Brother’s first flight to Singapore’s first flight to
Newark). Because of fuel prices, the world will probably never go further in
connecting itself until, in all honesty, some new technology is developed (that
Sydney-London flight is not even on the table for planes that won’t be released
until the mid-2020s). Flight# SQ 21-22 represented something amazing in
aviation, as did the plane that flew it. It represented everything that was
alluring about aviation, the longest flight in the world on the world’s most
beautiful plane.-
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| The first flight - Picture taken on June 28, 2004.
All Credit to Airliners.net for the photos.
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