On Saturday, November 3, the inaugural Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) flight from Los Angeles to Singapore made a U-turn 40 minutes after takeoff, because of an “error with the engine oil meter readings,” according to a spokesman from the carrier.
It eventually took off again after a little more than three hours and completed the flight, arriving in Singapore on Sunday afternoon, November 4, without further incident. There were 141 passengers aboard the flight.
Flight SQ37 took off from LA at 2:24 pm on November 3, local time. While the aircraft was over the Pacific Ocean, the plane turned back to LA. “A decision was made to return to LA about 40 minutes into the flight after the flight crew detected an error with the engine oil meter readings,” a spokesman said.
Upon landing back in LA, the flight was inspected by engineers, who cleared the plane safe for flying.
The plane for this particular flight is the new Airbus 350-900ULR (ultra-long-range) aircraft, of which SIA is the first carrier to use.
In order to accommodate the increasing demands for flights to the United States, SIA announced last July that more non-stop flights were forthcoming.
By this Friday, November 9, there will be daily flights from LA to Singapore, with more ultra-long-range airplanes utilized for this purpose. And by next month, 3 more Singapore-LA flights will be added, making a total of 10 non-stop flights every week.
In October, SIA also started flying the longest commercial flight offered anywhere in the world, an almost 19 hour trip from New York to Singapore, which had been halted in 2013 due to expensive fuel prices at that time.
By September next year, SIA has said it will be flying non-stop to Seattle. And by the end of this year, SIA will be operating a total of 53 flights every week to the United States, 27 of which are non-stop.
The SIA spokesman said that plans to for the LA-Singapore route will continue despite last weekend’s incident.