The all-business-class flights will end in the fourth- quarter of next year, along with similar serv

The all-business-class flights will end in the fourth- quarter of next year, along with similar services to Los Angeles, co op travel agents the airline said in a statement yesterday, as it announced an order for 25 Airbus SAS aircraft. The Toulouse- based planemaker will acquire the five four-engine co op travel agents A340-500s used on the non-stop routes as part of the deal.
I took the flight twice, in 2006 and 2007 in executive economy. They were really great flight experiences, I watched several movies, had about four meals, and took several naps. It was service like what those old airline co op travel agents posters used to advertise.
The problem with these flights is that they burn through fuel like crazy because carrying 19 hours worth of fuel makes the plane much heavier which requires yet more fuel, etc. As the article notes, Singapore Air is canceling the non-stop services, which started in 2004, as it phases out older aircraft following a more than 30 percent jump in fuel prices over two years .
Breaking the journey up can save on fuel costs. co op travel agents If this is evidence of stagnation, the relevant part of the economy to look for the stagnation is in petroleum extraction and/or the failure to find cheaper alternatives.
On the meta level, petroleum extraction and alternative energy co op travel agents sources are more important to determining whether there s any stagnation. Firms can respond to market pressures in a stagnant or near stagnant economy. We know this because co op travel agents there are many such economies co op travel agents in the world today and in the recent past, whether or not you include the U.S.
With drone technology it should be cheap and efficient to simply re-fuel co op travel agents planes in air using periodic small payloads. You could efficient send jet fuel to various Pacific co op travel agents islands using cheap ships. Only load the plane with say 1/10 the amount of fuel it needs so it doesn t have to carry much weight. Then just keep re-fueling along the way using your drones.
This would pretty much be impossible for any commercial co op travel agents airline to do because of 1) the regulation on civilian drone use, 2) huge regulatory hurdles to mid-air co op travel agents refueling for civil aircraft, and 3) the FAA is never going to allow flights to leave without enough fuel to arrive at their destination.
co op travel agents Yep. And which voting block is most prone to increasing regulation, to the precautionary principle, and to overcaution for the sake of expressing care in the abstract, long-term consequences be damned?
The answer is closely linked with the constant discussion of gender gaps in American politics. co op travel agents New technologies co op travel agents are incompatible with voters who are risk adverse. It happens co op travel agents that men are less risk adverse than women.
I m sure these regulations have nothing to do with the idea that using drones for fueling 1/10th of a flight, and not carrying enough fuel to get to a destination, would never run into problems in difficult weather or storm conditions.
Or maybe the technology isn t even developed to the point to make such a system for intercontinental flight conceivable, much less safe, practical, and a better economic solution to just fueling the plane on the ground.
Would running these refueling drones co op travel agents actually save fuel compared to simply landing and refueling? Each drone would have to spend fuel to get up to 30,000 feet and to match the passenger aircraft s cruising velocity. Does this really save money and fuel compared to simply adding a stopover on the passenger aircraft s route?
But non-stop flight co op travel agents distances have been increasing, so I doubt that s an important factor. I think the main problem with this particular flight is that the A340, which Singapore uses on the route, just isn t a very economical aircraft. All the new widebodies except the A380 have only two engines. More fuel efficient and lower maintenance costs. Twin-engine co op travel agents widebodies also killed co op travel agents off the tri-jets (DC10/MD11/L1011).
co op travel agents A critical point in this discussion is recent changes in rules about ETOPS (Extended range Twin Operations). Till recently there were still routes on the globe hard to do in a twin engine because of the 180 min. diversion airport requirement.
I wonder if the eventual deployment of 787s and the like will make really co op travel agents long routes co op travel agents viable again. Fuel prices are going nowhere but up in the long run, so plastic planes like the 787 and eventual EADS equivalents co op travel agents should become viable in time.
Me, if I m in Singapore after that 18 hours! Even the close to 24 hour total travel time to get to Maputo last year was worth it. Some things are still best done face to face and besides that I tremendously enjoy going new places and meeting new people.
This is where I m at . the increase in an alternate technology (virtual telepresence) has reduced the demand and cost effectiveness of flying 19hrs at a go as a luxury item. There just aren t enough people willing to pay the cost anymore.
Isn t this as likely to reflect substitution to technological innovation such as teleconferencing and email that has reduced the demand for 19-hour business-class flights, with higher fuel costs/passenger to handle the inefficiencies of a 19-hour flight (as Ricardo mentions above)? If so, then not necessarily evidence for stagnation. (After all, if a commercially feasible Star Trek transporter were invented tomorrow, this would also end Singapore-Newark flights, but it wouldn t be stagnation.)
Not sure this is stagnation, but it is frustration. Just took SingAir flight last month out of Newark, I really rely on it. Costs a fortune, but it is worth it. I think that is the key. Huge time saver from a business perspective (3 hour layovers are problematic on 13 hour flights, they just don t land on time). I work for a tech firm, but you still have to show up for speeches, customer co op travel agents meetings, supplier meetings. This is a pretty big loss for the NY area. I would bet they could raise the prices and people would still pay it. Is that the stagnation part?
The first possibility is simply that fuel costs have risen faster than people s willingness to pay for non-stop flights. You can just as easily blame that on economic growth in China as on stagnation in the petroleum extraction and airplane engineering sectors.
Another possibility is simply that there isn t enough market co op travel agents for these non-stop flights even setting co op travel agents aside rising fuel costs. The Bloomberg article noted that passenger loads on the LAX and Newark flights were below other routes so the company appears to have made a rather simple business decision to cut them. Many factors may be behind co op travel agents this relative lack of demand so it seems a bit premature to blame it on stagnation. For instance, Singapore Airlines will now stop in Tokyo on the way to LAX maybe they realize they can squeeze a lot more money out of this route by selling tickets for SingaporeTokyo and TokyoLAX. It s not as if there aren t plenty of other flights co op travel agents running non-stop between East Asia and LAX or SFO.
Finally, I don t know much about airplanes but Cathay Pacific is still running its non-stop HKG-JFK flight using a Boeing 777. The Wikipedia article on Boeing 777 points out that it is a relatively fuel-efficient aircraft and that one extended range model once completed a non-stop flight co op travel agents from Hong Kong to London going eastward . So it s not as if we are losing the capability to run non-stop flights. The problem appears to be simply fuel costs and consumer co op travel agents demand.
In fairness, this move isn t telling about the overall economy. While there may have been some irrational exuberance in the decision to fly the routes initially, the aircraft doesn t just burn fuel at a high rate (so much fuel that they burn tons of fuel to carry the fuel needed for the flights) but burns fuel at a higher rate than anticipated co op travel agents by the manufacturer.
With fuel prices far higher than expected when the planes went into service, the economics of the plane just don t work out and especially don t work out on the ultra-long haul routes that the planes are intended for. You only get a single flight a day out of each aircraft, which is expensive to operate, the yields that would be necessary to make the flights work are just unachievable almost regardless of economic circumstance.
And Singapore managed to unload the aircraft back on the manufacturer as part of a deal for new aircraft, they re out from underneath a money-loser that would have been a money loser under almost any scenario once the actual operating costs (vs projected operating costs) came to be known through flight experience.
People co op travel agents keep missing the big picture. The point is not that these aren t rational local moves. The point is that technology hasn t dramatically improved so that planes which are much more than incrementally better than 747s of 30 odd years ago are available to cheaply fly tons of passengers directly and quickly from point to point. No matter how you measure it, improvement in terms of speed to get from point A to point B hasn t moved much in 3 decades. Kinda like how it s not a lot faster to travel co op travel agents from DC to Boston than 3 decades ago whether by car, train, or plane.
co op travel agents Since there is no price at which a business class traveler can get as good a travel experience in both a commercial airplane AND the airport as in 1975 and must increasingly put up with longer travel times (e.g. Singapore plus all the other airlines that have cancelled direct flights to various cities making travel much harder) I would say this is very much a relative issue of weighted gains. And again, it s evidence of TGS since extremely rapid growth would make virtually everyone better off (Compare televisions today to color tv in 1970 for a clearer example of no stagnation). It s NOT enough to say some things have gotten better. That merely proves Tyler s point about TGS.
How many business class travelers in 1975 had seats that converted into lie-flat beds on long flights? co op travel agents Personal video screens with choices of dozens of movies? There was no wifi or internet on planes in 1975. I suspect the quality and variety co op travel agents of food and wine available to business class passengers has also improved significan