Originally Posted by hfly
Sq are one of the most notorious and insidious discounters on earth. Their ticket offices worldwide are the originators of more "grey" market fares for Biz than any other airline I can think of. Anyone who makes a statement like "SQ doesn;t discount biz" really either has little experience in the airline game, or is just simply buying their tickets in the wrong place. BTW, almost every single airline, not just * airlines discount all classes, its just a question of dates and avails.
"Notorious" and "Insidious" might be a little OTT to describe their choice of having more agent-nett fares instead of published discounted fares. It's just a different route of making the fares available to the public, and most Asian airlines (not just SQ) seem to prefer to offer discounted fares (in all classes) by nett fares through travel agents rather than publishing the fares onto CRS.
Besides, in many cases SQ ends up one of the more expensive options anyway so although their discounted fares might be much cheaper than normal fares, they are still often more than other (dare I say "lower tier") airlines such as OZ and BR/CI etc. Still, £2600 from LHR to SYD in Raffles is not a bad offer at all...