Originally Posted by
lokijuh
Are there any of these left in Europe? (i.e. that would have sufficient high margin for 12-14 hr flight point to point supplemented by SE Asia/ANZ network traffic).
If you look at any list of major global cities, whether by GDP total for the city, or by Alpha city ranking, or various other parameters, probably the one major European city that SQ doesn't serve, that is high on these lists is Madrid, but I guess that faces more towards Latin America than Asia. Beyond Europe the 2 notable missing cities are Chicago and Toronto (and both star alliance hubs), but being 19+ hrs the economics of flights are obviously very different to Europe. Further down most city lists, in Europe, apart from previous destinations that were suspended during pandemic you get to the likes of Hamburg, Vienna and Dublin.
I would agree with your premise. At one of the recent SQ events, management mentioned more US destinations might be more likely, either Chicago or Boston (for all the biotech and vc-related travel).
They are monitoring some second tier destinations (e.g Berlin etc) but the issue is not so much the demand on a given day -- Berlin, for example, does have some tech traffic, but rather how volatile those places are in the face of an economic downturn -- when the going is good, they are great, but you go through a bust and all demand dries up, unlike SQ's more "vanilla" destinations. This is what killed Berlin in the first place in late 90s.
Originally Posted by
bent
given the proximity of ZRH to GVA, i don't think SQ will operate GVA.
It is interesting that France is such a huge country but SQ only operates to CDG. and with only 1-1.5x daily frequency pre pandemic. Contrast with Germany where there are multiple frequencies a day even back then when DUS was an online point.
France is super concentrated when it comes to its economic / corp activity compared to DE and demand to other FR cities is likely cyclical, though, they are monitoring GVA (to capture some of the surrounding area with Lyon).
DUS has one of the largest JP pop outside Japan, with lots of corp traffic to Asia (but clearly not strong enough to weather covid). MUC should be obvious as it is in the richest part of DE. Apart from being a key gateway to Europe, FRA also has the fifth freedom route, which SQ will always operate for prestige, even if the flight times for connecting traffic are far from ideal (blame LH
).
Ultimately, SQ is mainly depended on corp traffic due to how far SG is from anywhere, which is why none of their destinations are too surprising. FDI and economic ties have always been prioritized by the gahmen. This is a slightly different premise to ME3 who are much better located to serve more destinations in Europe and funnel to Asia with shorter flying times.