Faster flights between Australia and Singapore?
That delectable dish of satay or chilli crab could be a little bit closer…
By David Flynn, August 19 2024
Qantas and Singapore Airlines are aiming to reduce the time it takes to fly between Australia and Singapore during a three-month trial of a new way to route international flights.
Pilots are conventionally required to keep aircraft within a set of fixed corridors throughout their journey
However, until early November, they’ll be able to steer their own way by choosing the most direct and efficient path through international airspace boundaries, a practice known as ‘user-preferred routing’.
Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Indonesia are all taking part in the trial, which spans some 38 routes across the Asia-Pacific skyways.
In addition to trimming travel time, the approach is intended to reduce fuel burn and carbon emissions, with the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore citing a potential saving of up to 1,700kg of fuel on a flight between Singapore and Melbourne.
Routes included in the study are from Singapore to Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin, Melbourne, Perth, Auckland and Christchurch, as well as from Sydney to Singapore.
Flights from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are currently scheduled to take around eight hours, with the more direct Perth-Singapore route shy of six hours.
How much time the new routing options will save remains to be seen, as many of these flights already come in under their scheduled duration, while also facing factors such as headwinds and tailwinds which can slow or speed a flight.
Singapore Airlines says it is running the trials on 15 flights, and “expects to achieve time and fuel savings when wind conditions are favourable on these routes.”
“This will potentially enhance our customers’ convenience when they fly with us” while also cutting down on carbon emissions.
Qantas’ group chief risk officer Andrew Monaghan said user-preferred routing will allow Qantas to tailor individual flight routes and simplify flight planning processes.
QFF
19 Sep 2013
Total posts 206
Qantas used to regularly do PER-SIN in under 5 hours, often 4hrs 50 mins. These days it seems to be always more than 5 hours, I’m presuming to save fuel. Will be interesting to see if they bring the time down to under 5 hrs again, but I doubt it.
05 Oct 2017
Total posts 527
Depends on the aircraft type; the A330 is slower than most other types. Singapore Airlines averages 4h40 on this route using B787s or A350s.
QFF
12 Apr 2013
Total posts 1560
4 hours 40 min? Seriously? Flightradar 24 believes that for last week SQ208 that use A350 flew from 7:23 to 7:42. BTW QF37 that use A330 flying from 7:30 to 8:06 - i.e. just a tad slower.
05 Oct 2017
Total posts 527
Look at Flightradar24 again for flights between Perth and Singapore. You're mistaking Melbourne or Sydney with Perth. Perth to Singapore is UNDER 5 hours in both directions. It becomes 5 hours if there's weather that needs to be avoided or the aircraft needs to circle (which typically happens when landing in Singapore only; there's not enough air traffic at Perth to require that under most circumstances).
06 Jan 2023
Total posts 2
How much of a reduction in flight time are we talking about? Arguably the most important piece of detail doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the article
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
16 Jan 2018
Total posts 128
I’m wondering if that’s already in place. I flew on JQ last night from DPS to SYD. Was meant to depart at 22:35, but didn’t start taxi until 22:55. Instead of arriving at originally scheduled 06:15, arrived in Sydney at around 05:50 but had to circle and landed at 06:05. All up around 30 minutes faster than originally planned. Best part of it all was the fast escape through immigration and having to only wait about 10 minutes for bags. Even customs was a breeze. 25 minutes all up. Sooooo much better than DPS where even with the new e visa and automated immigration it still takes well over an hour.
29 Jan 2016
Total posts 26
We did the e-gates and were through in under a minute (late June). With the exception of me, of course, who made a small mistake on my digital arrival form and had to join a queue.
Were you traveling during a busy time? We were 8:30pm
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
06 Oct 2016
Total posts 175
I was on a SQ 4 hour delayed flight in April (equipment change) and they caught up 2 hours, the pilot announced they were going to push to get back time. I assumed they tried to do the same the other way to get back more.
Great for a day trip, (11am became 3 on the 350) but over night I would want more sleep!!!
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
15 Jun 2018
Total posts 4
After spending nearly 30 years based in Singapore, I still don't understand why QANTAS doesn't have a day flight to Sydney. They used to briefly have one with QF32. There is nothing worse than flying back to OZ on that red-eye flight.
20 Nov 2015
Total posts 477
I suppose if it was a daytime flight from Singapore to Sydney, then that would also mean an overnight flight from Sydney to Singapore, and maybe there's just not enough people to justify that? That might change with the A321XLRs if they can justify that aircraft on that schedule. But for Qantas, Singapore is either an end-point or a transit point. As a transit point the main connection is onto QF1 to London or QF2 from London, both are evening services so a daytime flight up to Singapore makes sense. And if you are flying to Singapore to stay in Singapore then a daytime flight is better because you can go straight to your hotel. A daytime flight from Singapore to Sydney means an overnight flight from Sydney to Singapore, so this has no connectivity benefit except for those few passengers flying onwards on Jetstar Asia, and as far as Singapore being a destination, you get to the hotel a long time before you can check in.
17 Nov 2023
Total posts 43
I couldn't agree more. We often fly into Singapore in the evening, (e.g. from SEA or YVR) and I want to stay overnight to get into the time zone. A day departure would be VERY VERY helpful.
20 Oct 2015
Total posts 245
If you're flying from Seattle or Vancouver wouldn't that be on SQ, so your SIN-AU flight would also be SQ, which has daytime flights?
22 Sep 2017
Total posts 94
As ABT notes, the plane has to get to Singapore ready to fly in the morning. A straight out-and-back from Sydney would leave in the evening around 9pm (curfew with a bit of buffer) so arrive in Singapore at 3am. Qantas is not going to leave the plane parked there for 7 hours waiting for that convenient mid-morning flight. Another option would be to fly from Melbourne at midnight (popular choice), arrive in Singapore at 6am, then depart 9am for Sydney. But then there needs to be the opposite pattern somewhere to balance the passengers and planes, it's too complicated for Qantas.
QFF
12 Apr 2013
Total posts 1560
Answer is SQ - they have daytime flights to and from Melbourne. And while overnight flight to be able to survive one need to fly in Business daytime flight perfectly bearable in SQ PE seat.
Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards
08 Dec 2023
Total posts 3
This could be bad news for anyone that works for a company that only pays for business class for flights over 8 hours :-)
20 Oct 2015
Total posts 245
I used to work in the local AU office of a big international company and 7 hours was the cut-off for business class, worked in our favour for SYD-SIN, apparently Head Office landed on 7 hours as this was the timing for a flight between London and New York.
QFF
12 Apr 2013
Total posts 1560
How funny it is! They consider NY is very far from London while for us Singapore is closest "true" overseas destination!
29 Jan 2012
Total posts 182
I would love to read a marketing release from the airlines which would benefit passengers for a change. As many of you have mentioned, airlines can already make up lost time if they choose, thus this story is simply airline marketing and has little benefit for the passenger, except possibly higher prices for tickets and economical savings for the airlines.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
24 Feb 2022
Total posts 15
Less fuel and less flying time means less costs!
I wonder if we will see a reduction in airfares 🤣
24 Apr 2022
Total posts 3
One advantage of being that much further away in Auckland. No short red eyes. With the Air NZ and Singapore Airlines partnership we get the option of daylight flights each way or overnight flights each way, approximately 10 hours duration. There's room to be faster
05 Oct 2017
Total posts 527
Perth-Singapore flights average 4h40m flying time, thus nowhere near 6 hours. 6 hours is the average flying time between Perth and Phuket.
I don't think there will be more than a 5 minute reduction in travel times by taking these new corridors than at present or 10 mins max. If you study the routes different flights and airlines take, they already previously appeared to have taken a number of different pathways and were seemingly less restricted than flight paths between Europe and Asia.
Different example, but just for reference - flights between SE Asia (BKK in this example) and Vienna on Austrian, overflying Afghan airspace are actually faster than the old Iranian route, especially in the eastbound direction. Of course, at present, most carriers don't overfly Iran due to tensions in that region. Flights on THAI or Swiss (eastbound) via the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan are barely taking any longer than the traditional, temporarily unusable Iranian air corridor.
Westbound, using the Wakhan corridor is faster than overflying Saudi Arabia. Yet European carriers are mostly choosing to fly over Saudi Arabia on westbound flights between Singapore/Kuala Lumpur/Bangkok and Europe, rather than the Wakhan corridor. Asian carriers are mostly using the Wakhan corridor on westbound flights as well, or across Afghanistan in some cases too.
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