My trip to Borneo was prompted by finding an extremely cheap round-trip ticket to Singapore on United Airlines. Flight UA37 was a newly-created direct route from Los Angeles to Singapore and was the longest commercial flight by duration at the time. Since the route was so new, United was unable to fill seats on the flight before the route began. They started selling round-trip tickets for only $380 during the first few weeks of the route in order to recuperate fuel costs. I already had a flight voucher with United Airlines after I let them bump me off my return flight from the DEFCON conference several months before so I didn't end up having to pay anything in the end.

Counter-intuitively, the flight was emptier the lower the fare class. First and business were almost full, economy plus was about half full, and the basic economy cabin was nearly empty. I had a row to myself with two empty rows in front of me and behind me. As UA37 is nearly 18 hours, this made the flight much more bearable.