Everyone who is talking about breakeven loads – remember, fuel prices have spiked significantly lately, so any old breakeven numbers are now going to be much higher. Spreading that cost across only 100 seats will be ugly.

Mike – I promise I’ll post the rest of my US Airways notes soon

Jeff – I wouldn’t expect to be able to use your FF miles on this flight anytime soon. They’ve made availability extremely tight on other flights with the new business class if it exists at all. They’re going to need to sell each one of these seats.

Jeff/Winston – You’re right, time-sensitive cargo might be able to hitch on ride on these flights now, but I’m not sure how much there is that would be willing to pay the premium. You don’t gain a ton of time by eliminating the stop, only a couple of hours. For most cargo, I don’t think it’ll make a difference.

Winston – I tend to agree that this was the best decision considering what’s available to them right now. I’m just not sure it’s going to be profitable, but it very well may be the least unprofitable.

QRC – Ah, but it’s no fun talking about all the great things Asian carriers are doing. It’s more fun talking about what a mess the airlines are over here. I don’t doubt that there is demand for these routes, but I wonder if enough high fare demand will be there to fill both of these flights everyday at a high enough price to make them profitable. We’ll see. And yes, I saw the video of the Cathay 777 flyby. That was one LOW pass.

I’ve done that flight a few times in J, and it was packed each time. My colleagues frequently have to waitlist for it in J. I think your hunch is right about WHY they did it, but the demand for 100 J seats is definitely there and I wouldn’t be surprised if they can charge more. The SQ SIN-LAX and SIN-EWR flights are very high-yield, as are the CX HKG-JFK flights (CX HKG-LAX aren’t so much, because CX has overloaded the routes with 3 daily HKG-LAX in addition to UA, 2 daily HKG-SFO in addition to SQ and UA, and something like 17x weekly HKG-YVR). CX HKG-JFK might take the cake – a round-trip F class can sometimes cost $25k USD, and last month I paid $14k USD for HKG-JFK in J. Around the world tickets in F cost me about $15k or sometimes a little more, but I can include that leg. Or if I did TPE-HKG-JFK round trip instead the cost is like $10-11k in F the difference is that significant. No kidding – sometimes I can find cheaper F fares ex-TPE than J fares ex-HKG, so I just head to Taiwan, have two or three meetings there and then go to New York passing right back through HKG, where I live.

What is my point? I think you’re right on the money about probably why, but the demand from Asian financial centers to LAX and New York is huge. Plus, sitting on the new SQ J class is pretty awesome, and that’s coming from someone who spends more time on CX than on the ground.

Finally, not sure if this is related because I don’t know jack about the airliners themselves, BUT CX used to operate their 3 leased A340-600s on the HKG-JFK runs. It was a total disaster…those damn planes had tech delays every other flight I was on, and I do that route monthly. They have since removed them and exclusively use their new 777s (which is another cool story, did you see how the chief pilot of CX got booted a few weeks ago after doing a fly-by in Seattle taking delivery of a new 777?).

1) The new J-class seat is physically lighter than the older Spacebed product. This allows for revenue cargo to be flown to and from EWR & LAX (The current configuration does not allow for any cargo save for pax luggage.)

2) Historically, the J class load factors on both SIN-LAX vv. and SIN-EWR vv. flights have been obscenely high for all flights, even after accounting for the sub-prime crisis. It’s the Y+ load factors that have been disappointing for SQ…

3) SQ did a cost-benefit analysis on trading in the five 345s for the 777LR with Boeing. From all known accounts (check out the forums on airliners.net and sqtalk.com for more detailed explanations), SQ felt that the trade was not worth it.

Hence, the decision to fit the 345 with an-all J-class product. Financially it’s the best decision for SQ, but on a personal note (I’m based in Tempe), it sucks big time for me because J-class is out of my budget, and Y+ from LAX-SIN is wonderful especially when it’s a short 17 hour flight over the small pond that is the Pacific…