New 18-hour United Flight To Contend For Title Of World’s Longest
On Thursday, the United Airlines has announced that it will launch an 18-hour flight between Los Angeles and Singapore which probably be the longest flight covering the route to or from the US.
The Westbound flights include the timings of 17 hours and 55 minutes. As per now, it is confirmed that the Flight UA 37 will depart from Los Angeles daily and will arrive in Singapore. The approximate total distance between the two is about 8,700 miles which are around 14000 km.
Talking about the return flight, it is UA 38 which will depart from Singapore’s Changi Airport at 11.00 am daily and arrive at Los Angeles International Airport at 10.15 am the same day.
The calculated flying times linked to the flights is about 17 hours and 55 minutes westbound and around 15 hours and 15 minutes eastbound.
As per the statement of the airline on Thursday, it gets the government approval and flights will start on October 27 and for the purpose, the Boeing 787 planes will be used.
There seems to United is ready to set a new distance record for a flight to or from the United States at 8,700 miles that is the longest distance to be traveled from LAX to SIN.
Not only this, United has already supported the existing service between San Francisco International Airport and Singapore which was started one year back in July 2016. According to United, that particular flight holds the current record for the longest scheduled 787 flight operated by any airline which includes the distance of 8,446 miles.
As of now, United will operate both the routes with Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft.
According to United’s senior vice president of Worldwide Sales, Dave Hilfman; ‘Whether our customers are on leisure or business travel, United is making travel to Singapore easier and even more convenient than ever before …,’
Currently, United is operating more than 130 flights to over 40 airports across the US only.
On this, the CEO of Los Angeles World Airports, Deborah Flint has also stated that ‘We are proud that United Airlines will set a new record for the longest nonstop route by a domestic carrier right here at LAX.’
Coming the features of United’s 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft, it will include a total of 252 seats out of which 48 are United Polaris business class and 204 United Economy (88 Economy Plus).
Passengers traveling through this route can enjoy facilities like availability of an adjustable headrest and seatback monitor and also the United Economy Plus section offers up to five inches of extra legroom.
Right Now, the longest US flight is Qantas’ with an 8,578-mile trip from Dallas-Fort Worth to Sydney- Australia.
Talking about the other flights that don’t touch the US, the Qatar Airways flies a total of 9,032-miles between its hub in Doha and New Zealand.
This announcement arrives after a span of two months of bad press from which the airlines is going through.
In April only, a number of incidents were reported linked to United flights. The most famous one is the Dr. Dao case when aviation police violently drug Dao out of a flight. This lead to some serious injuries to the passenger too.
A month later in May, one of the passengers reported a scorpion attack that caused sudden evacuation.
Last week only, as per the reports; the airline also accused a gay father who was flying with his son to North Carolina. Rather the airlines immediately issued an apology after that incident.