Sydney Airport to welcome A380's arrival

[Yada Yada]

Sydney Airport to welcome A380's arrival
June 6, 2006 - 6:49PM

Sydney Airport has welcomed Singapore Airlines' decision to make it the world's first destination for a scheduled service of the Airbus new generation superjumbo.

Sydney Airport corporate affairs manager Rod Gilmour said that it will be a red letter day for the airport when the double-decker A380 touches down in Sydney after its maiden commercial flight in December.

"This is one of the major global aviation events for decades," he said

More...

The article also says "The airline decided that Singapore to Sydney would be the first route on which it will fly, rather than London to Singapore because of the shorter distance and lower crew requirements."

Perhaps. I wonder if they also decided upon Sydney for competitive reasons too? It will be great publicity to land the first A380 commercial flight here before Qantas begins any services with this aircraft.

[cssaus]

I wonder which of the 3 daily flts the A380 will be doing?

[serfty]

I wonder which of the 3 daily flts the A380 will be doing?

Two: SQ221 & SQ231

[cssaus]

That's a shame, I usually do the SQ220/SQ219 flts.

[odoherty]

Perhaps we'll see a further reduction of fares to SIN
-- compare the price of a return J to SIN, with a return J to HKG!

[Mal]

Nice little marketing ploy from SQ.

I think there are both political and commercial reasons to fly to Australia with the 380.

Now, when will Qantas start selling tix for their first 380 flight? May be interested in hopping on it if the price is right...

[NM]

The main driver behind their plan to use SIN-SYD-SIN as the initial operation is timing of schedules. When they start operations with a single aircraft, they can operate a daily service to SYD. SIN-SYD and SYD-SIN are around 8 hour flights, leaving sufficient time for turn-arounds at each end. SIN-LHR-SIN cannot be operated as a daily service by a single aircraft due to the longer flight times (around 13 hours).

The daily operation is desirable for a few reasons, one being crew training. They can have 2 crews operating each daily cycle and hence more crew gaining experience that would be possible operating the 13 hour flights to London.

Once they have a few more aircraft in the fleet, they can operate a daily schedule to London.

[Wunala Dreaming]

If I'm not mistaken, SQ will take delivery on 2 A380s before year's end. That is just short of the amount required to operate a daily SIN-LHR-SIN 380 service.

First 2 will be used on short intra-Asia hops and of course SYD.

I remember reading that the first SQ A380 would operate SQ222 SIN-SYD

Regards

[mileagemax]

Just checked the schedules on singaporeair.com and it still shows 747 in December/January

Probably wishful thinking that they would update the website to A380 now... but you think it is highly likely to be 221/222 and 231/232?

Should I book my ticket now and take a gamble that it will be the A380 or wait?

[Kiwi Flyer]

Given all the delays so far, SQ wont put A380 into the schedule until they're very certain of the dates they can use it (after training runs etc).

If you specially want to be on A380 then either wait until the flights are announced (note there is a risk they'll change - eg the A345 ultralonghauls start changed about 3 times), or get a flexible ticket on best guess of flights and change later (assuming there will still be availability in the right fare classes). If SQ introduces new fare classes (unlikely but possible) specially for A380 then you may have a change fee or surcharge to change.

Me - I'm waiting, but I know someone else who hopes to be on the inaugural flights who has already gotten a full fare ticket so they can be sure of being able to swap to the right flight.