Singapore Airlines

A fifth freedom route/flight is one where an airline from one country flys between two other countries to which it is not related - these are usually add-on flights to complement a flight originating from the airline's home base. Examples of fifth freedom routes include Cathay Pacific's Vancouver to New York route (an add-on to the airline's Hong Kong - Vancouver route) and LAN's Madrid to Frankfurt route which adds-on to the airlines Santiago - Madrid flight.

The initial Singapore Airlines A350 routes were announced at the beginning of March with Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta being the first cities to have Singapore Airlines A350 service. It wasn't long before long-haul routes started to appear with Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Dusseldorf all seeing A350 service announced. Now Singapore Airlines has announced another destination for its A350 aircraft - Melbourne, Australia.

A few news stories doing the rounds right now including Singapore Airlines introducing a new system to allow its passengers to bid on upgrades, American Airlines working with the TSA to improve the wait-times at airport security and Norwegian being optimistic and publishing a tentative Cork to Boston schedule despite recent issues with the DOT.

A look at some of the news stories that I noticed over the past week that didn’t merit a blog post of their own but that may be of interest or of use nonetheless. Stories include Lufthansa getting closer to offering wifi on short and medium-haul flights, Singapore Airlines adding capacity to its London route, and Emirates adding an A380 to its Auckland route.

Singapore Airlines has some of the more aspirational cabin products around and that makes them very popular with miles & points collectors. The airline’s First Class suites aboard its A380 aircraft were lauded long before the Middle Eastern airlines started to bling up their cabins to today’s standards…..

It started with a mathematical hint yesterday, was followed up with a far less subtle hint this morning and now Australian Business Traveller is reporting that Singapore Airlines will announce non-stop flights between Singapore and San Francisco as early as this week.

Back in March, when Singapore Airlines first announced the initial routes for its new A350-900, Dusseldorf was scheduled to be the second long haul destination for the airline's new aircraft. Amsterdam was the first to receive Singapore Airlines A350 service and next up was supposed to be Dusseldorf...but that's changed.

Singapore Airlines is one of the latest airlines to add a Premium Economy cabin to its aircraft and, while the addition of the new cabins has been anything but smooth, the airline is on track to have the all of the refits completed by the end of 2016. Now that Singapore Airlines is actually flying aircraft with their new Premium Economy product (e.g. A350 service between Singapore and Amsterdam) the airline has decided to upgrade its award chards to reflect the new product.

Singapore airlines has long been associated with some of the best premium cabins in the sky. They seem to be able to offer the service that you often see on the Middle Eastern carriers without the ostentatious decor, over-the-top furnishings or questionable workplace practices. And now those premium cabins are about to get a new look.

We’ve know for a while that Singapore – Amsterdam would be the first long-haul route on which Singapore Airlines would deploy their brand new Airbus A350-900 aircraft (I discussed this back in October), we’ve also known that Düsseldorf would be getting A350 service and we’ve known a bit about what the aircraft’s cabin layout is going to be like….but now we have some actual dates and a bit more information.