"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
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

Cathay was around in the 40s and 50s in a very small way but only started
operating to London in the very early 80s (followed by Vancouver).
Singapore Airlines took over all the Singapore based routes os Malaysian
Singapore Airlines in 1972 and started serving London in 1973.