Singapore Airlines has made a deal with Airbus to buy 5 more A380 aircraft that is contingent upon Airbus taking their current A340-500 aircraft back for resale.  It’s a good, smart deal for Singapore and not really a surprise.

Singapore probably could use a few more A380s for 747 replacement and growth.  But those A340-500 aircraft are fuel hogs compared to anything else in their fleet.  It was time for them to go.

Since they’re  leaving, so are the Singapore routes from Singapore to LA and New York City.  The longest aircraft routes on record today will be no more and that leaves the Sydney-Dallas route as being the top leader.   Those routes were prestige routes that never really earned much money and less so today.  If Singapore truly wanted to continue them, they could have added 777-200LR aircraft to that route and flown more people for less costs.

In a way, it’s kind of a quiet ending to what was originally an exciting aircraft.  Admittedly, the A340 got eclipsed by the 777-200LR pretty quickly but it was a very impressive aircraft for range when it arrived and really made people think when it began serving routes that were really about halfway across the face of the earth.

Filed under: Airline Fleets by ajax