Flyer458

Since Singapore flies to both Manchester and London wil the airline ever consider flights from Scotland like Glasgow or Edinburgh would that ever happen

lokijuh

lMHO, no chance of this happening in the foreseeable future. Maybe once Scotland leaves the UK and rejoins the EU

I’d say the next 3 European destinations SQ will add to their current network would be Düsseldorf, Stockholm and Brussels. Based on pre-Covid destinations/planned destinations.

Coffee drinker

Wouldn't discount Berlin. It's served with Scoot at the moment but may receive an upgrade.

bent

Doesn't sound like a corporate traffic kind of destination. SQ needs corproate traffic demand in order to make the route work.
By that principle, highly unlikely that Glasgow / Edinburgh gets the green light. Unless they do some sort of 5th freedom like MXP/BCN.

carrotjuice

Even MAN itself isn’t sufficient to be a corporate route, which is why it’s a fifth freedom point en route to the oil headquarters in IAH.

MAN also doubles as a gateway to the north of UK (including Scotland) so unlikely that EDI or GLA will be introduced as a second northern gateway.

demue

SQ tried that years ago when they were flying Berlin via ZRH as a tag on. Took it once in 1996/97 IIRC on a 744 (in Eco). Still was marvelous over LH in those days. Anyways, the route is unlikely as others said, not enough premium pax.

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.

PES_B1

Maybe GVA?

SQ would likely bring all of those Chinese routes back(SQ don't even fly to CAN anymore due to COVID)

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.

RayG

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.

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.

PES_B1

Unless the Marselie government or any french city goverment decided to give huge subsidry for SQ(like WLG, 9 NZD per pax) to operate those flights, the chances are slim, but one possibility might be to operate it as a stop for a flight going into South America such as GIG or GRU.

bent

yea, pity BCN-GRU didnt even work last long