Singapore Airlines (SIA) will deploy the Airbus A380 on its daily service to Beijing starting August 1.
The superjumbo will be deployed on flight SQ802, which departs from Singapore at 0830 and arrives in Beijing at 1440. The return flight SQ807 leaves Beijing at 1635 for a scheduled touchdown at 2255 in Singapore.
Currently, the carrier operates four daily services to the Chinese Capital with a mixed fleet of B777 and A330 aircraft. Flight SQ802 and SQ807 are serviced by a Boeing 777-300ER in a three-class configuration, with eight seats in first (1-2-1), 42 in business (1-2-1) and 228 in economy (3-3-3). The superjumbo also sports a three-class configuration, but offers 12 seats in first (1-2-1), 60 in business (1-2-1) and 399 in economy (3-4-3 on the lower deck and 2-4-2 on the upper deck).
The change in aircraft may appear to represent an end-to-end upgrade of cabin capacity for the Singapore–Beijing service, but SIA has also announced that the A380 will in fact be replacing two of its flights to Beijing, which means that the city will only be served three times per day instead of four. The carrier has not confirmed which flight will be dropped, but even it is one flown by the smaller A330-300, which has 285 seats in a two-class configuration (30 in business and 255 in economy), it will still represent a decrease in overall capacity.
Beijing becomes the second city in China to be served by the A380 after Shanghai. The aircraft is also deployed to Hong Kong, as well as to Frankfurt, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne (until October 25), Mumbai, New Delhi, New York, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo Narita and Zurich.
For more information, visit www.singaporeair.com
Clement Huang
