United Airlines Asia strategy & Singapore-US market evolve with Singapore-San Francisco non-stops

United Airlines is bolstering its presence in the Singapore market with the Jun-2016 launch of non-stop flights to San Francisco with 787-9s. It will be the longest route in United's network and the longest route in the world for the 787, resulting in limited payload restrictions on the westbound leg.

The new San Francisco flight will give Singapore a non-stop option to the US for the first time since Singapore Airlines (SIA) dropped non-stops to Los Angeles and Newark in 2013. SIA is planning to resume Los Angeles and New York non-stops in 2018, and has also has been evaluating San Francisco non-stops, but United will beat SIA by two years with its own Singapore-US service. SIA and United are both members of the Star Alliance but have never codeshared, and have no intentions of partnering on Singapore-US non-stops.

United has a joint venture with Star member All Nippon Airways (ANA) that already includes one-stop services between Singapore and the US. The new Singapore-San Francisco non-stop route will be added to the JV (all three countries involved have open skies agreements). United is dropping Singapore-Tokyo while retaining Singapore-Hong Kong, but will be able to rely on ANA's expanded presence in the Singapore-Tokyo market to feed its Tokyo-US flights.