End of world's longest flight, Singapore to Newark, promises JFK chaos

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http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2013/10/end_of_worlds_longest_flight_s.html

The end of the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight, a 19-hour slog between Singapore and the New York region, is bad news for some travelers.

Soon, passengers will instead fly to JFK via Frankfurt, adding five hours.

Singapore Airlines Ltd. stops the services with its all-business class four-engine Airbus SAS A340-500 next month.

“It could take over an hour just to get through customs at JFK,” said one traveler. “I’m looking for another way to travel to New York so I can avoid flying into JFK,” he added.

With oil prices tripling in the last decade, the carrier struggled to ferry executives on the 100-seat flights profitably for the past nine years. The shrinking of Wall Street firms and travel cutbacks after the global financial crisis have made it difficult for airlines to lure top-dollar clients.

“SIA got greedy,” said Shukor Yusof, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s in Singapore. “It became less popular when SIA configured the cabins to all-business, instead of the business-super economy mix when it was first launched. It’s pretty much a fuel tanker in the air.”

SQ 21 will touch down at Changi in the early hours of Nov. 25, ending the world’s longest direct service.

The Newark service is about 16,700 kilometers long. The next longest non-stop commercial flight by distance will be Qantas Airways Ltd.’s 13,800-kilometer flight from Sydney to Dallas. Qantas uses a Boeing Co. 747-400ER on that route, the Australian carrier said.