Singapore Airlines made aviation history by operating its 1,000th A380 commercial flight since operations of the world’s largest passenger aircraft was launched on October 25, 2007.

SQ 322 departed from Singapore Changi Airport for London Heathrow Airport at 2330 hours Singapore time yesterday.

SIA’s A380 has clocked 8,500 flying hours and carried almost 400,000 customers during its almost-ten months of commercial service.

SIA’s A380 also flies to Sydney and Tokyo and, from August 2 to August 8, 2008 only, it will have A380 flights to Beijing for the Olympics.

To meet continuing demand from customers, SIA has stepped up training for crew, so that more are qualified to operate the A380 in the coming years.

To date, 140 pilots and 2,000 cabin crew have been trained to fly and serve onboard the aircraft.

Singapore Airlines currently has five A380s in service.

It is scheduled to receive a further 14 A380s, the next one by next month, and has options on a further six.

Last Friday, August 1, 2008, saw the first A380 commercial service flight by Emirates, the second airline to adopt the aircraft for commercial use.