In message , at 15:01:10 on
Wed, 20 Jun 2012, Graham Harrison
remarked:
I'm also surprised how
low Singapore Airlines comes. It pioneered the city state hub business
model that Emirates now uses, but has been comprehensively overtaken.

I thought that was Cathay Pacific (city hub in Hong Kong), bicbw.
-- Roland Perry

I think it depends on your definition of a hub. CX have been around
longer than SQ and have always operated out of HKG. However, the
extent to which they ran their network so that people could fly to HKG
and out again to their destination even when they started operating
Electras and later 880s is perhaps questionable. There's no doubt it
happened but for many years I suspect it was a happy coincidence rather
than a planned operation. Remember that on many routes they probably
only operated once a day and that they were restricted to operating
within East Asia for many years so that BOAC was protected against competition.

My very first International flight (in approx 1983) was Cathay Pacific
to Hong Kong with a connection to Osaka. Going out, the flight from the
UK was non-stop to HK, but coming back we had a refuelling stop
somewhere. I completely forget where, but in retrospect it was probably
Bahrain.

Our company favoured CP at the time because, iirc, their business class
had a checked baggage allowance of "N Pieces", completely irrespective
of how big or heavy it was. People were literally sending cabin trunks
back and forth.

What SQ became known for was bringing flights in from Europe to SIN,
shuffling the passengers and sending them on to Australasia. My
memory suggests they were doing that before CX was able to break out of
its' East Asian home and start operating intercontinentally.

So what year did you have in mind for that?
--
Roland Perry