Rather than going through London or Los Angeles,

passengers will travel in a bespoke long-range Airbus A350

up over the Arctic, before arriving New York 18 hours later.

Singapore Air has been busy buying the next generation of long route jets for the route

But it should take care.

In the long term,

new fuel-efficient planes could pose a serious threat to its business model.

Here’s why...

Singapore Airlines, along with Cathay Pacific, British Airways and Emirates

are in essence, global hub carriers.

Delta Airlines pioneered the model in the US in the 1950s

Hub and spoke networks mean you can use fewer planes

and have a better chance of filling them with passengers and making profits.

You can connect five cities in just four daily flights if one of the cities is a hub.

If all the connections direct, it takes ten daily flights.

These days, that pattern has been replicated on a global scale.

Half of all the passengers at Dubai airport now catch connecting flights

and that 30% at Singapore, Hong Kong and London Heathrow.

But there's a problem with such networks.

If you're not trying to cover as many destinations as possible,

you're better off just selling direct connections between the most popular cities.

Budget airlines Southwest and Ryanair proved this vividly in recent decades

by cherry picking the best routes, and using the savings to offer cheaper tickets.

Range limitations mean airlines have been using a more or less unchanged "hub and spoke" model

since the 747-400 was introduced in the late 1980s.

But the introduction of new versions of fuel-efficient jets,

like the Boeing 787, Airbus A350 and Boeing 777X,

offers the tantalizing opportunity

to offer point-to-point flying on a global scale.

At present, millions in Southeast Asia

can't fly direct to the US,

Australians have to change flights on route to Europe,

South America is off limits to almost all of East Asia.

If more fuel-efficient planes could make such routes viable,

that will open up a world of possibilities to travelers,

but the world's hub carriers could face a turbulent future.