YES. The year was 1990 (I think). And it was all AIR CANADA's FAULT!
SQ won the right to operate SIN-VIE-AMS-YYZ with full traffic rights. There were big fanfare on this route as it was SQ's first transatlantic route.
Literally within weeks of SQ's inuagural flight, AC complained to the Canadian govt that SQ was pilfering passengers away from its flights as passengers could have been flying on AC instead. Never mind that AC was not flying into AMS or VIE then. Never mind too that neither KL nor LH (OS wasn't flying then) did not complain about SQ being on this route.
Then the govt decided to ban SQ from taking 5th Freedom passengers from either VIE or AMS to YYZ and v.v. SQ was only permitted to fly passengers direct from SIN.
With that, SQ decided to pull out of YYZ and launched SIN-FRA-JFK within weeks of that.
I don't think SQ will ever return to YYZ. SQ has had frosty relations with AC ever since. Even though it 'code-shares' with AC on the SIN-LHR-YYZ route, let's be realistic about this. Will it ever work.
AC and SQ compete on the YVR-ICN route. Most people I think would prefer to fly SQ over AC. What do you think?
Last edited by Guy Betsy; May 26, 2004 at 9:31 pm
Reason: Dates