History of Singapore Airlines
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This article explores the history of Singapore Airlines, the flag carrier of the Republic of Singapore and based at the Singapore Changi Airport. Singapore Airlines, also known by its abbreviations of SIA or SQ, has often been ranked throughout its history as either amongst the best or the best airline in the world.[1][2]
Ranked as a 5-star airline by Skytrax for the last 2 decades, It has also been ranked amongst the top 10 air carriers worldwide in terms of the scale of revenue-passengers-kilometres, and 10th in the world for the volume of international passengers carried.[3][4]
Singapore Airlines is also one of the largest airline businesses in Asia, with nonstop or direct flights to destinations in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. The airline's slogan is "A Great Way To Fly".[5] The airline is notable for not having significantly changed its livery throughout its history, as well as the Singapore Girl, which was first introduced in 1972.
Malayan Airways was established in 1937 through a collaboration between the Straits Steamship Company of Singapore and two British firms, the Ocean Steamship Company and Imperial Airways. The aim was to create a regional airline, which was formalised with the incorporation of Malayan Airways Limited on 21 October 1937. However, the airline faced a period of inactivity as its leadership recognized the challenges of competing with Wearne's Air Service, which already dominated the local air routes between Singapore and British Malaya. The small market size and the looming threat of World War II further delayed operations. As a result, the airline's leadership decided to conserve resources and postpone its launch until conditions became more favorable.
Following the disruptions of World War II and the cessation of Wearne's Air Service, the aviation sector in Southeast Asia underwent a significant transition. The gap left by the discontinuation of Wearne's Air Service provided an opportunity for the development of a new regional airline.
In response to this, Malayan Airways was launched on 1 May 1947. The airline's inaugural flight, a chartered journey from the British Straits Settlement of Singapore to Kuala Lumpur on 2 April 1947, set the stage for regular weekly scheduled flights to destinations such as Ipoh and Penang starting from 1 May 1947, utilizing Airspeed Consul twin-engined aircraft.[6][7]
Continuing its expansion throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Malayan Airways received technical assistance from other Commonwealth airlines, including BOAC and Qantas Empire Airways. Joining IATA further propelled its growth.[8] By 1955, Malayan Airways boasted a fleet featuring a substantial number of Douglas DC-3, and the company went public in 1957. The first two decades saw the operation of various aircraft, including the Douglas Douglas DC-4 Skymaster, the Vickers Viscount, the Lockheed 1049 Super Constellation, the Bristol Britannia, the de Havilland Comet 4 and the Fokker F27. This period of dynamic development set the stage for the emergence of two prominent carriers, Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines, with Malayan Airways laying the foundation for their future success.
When Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak formed the Federation of Malaysia in 1963, the airline's name was changed, from "Malayan Airways" to "Malaysian Airways". MAL also took over Borneo Airways. In 1966, following Singapore's separation from the federation, the airline's name was changed again, to Malaysia-Singapore Airlines (MSA). The next year saw a rapid expansion in the airline's fleet and routes, including the purchase of MSA's first Boeing aircraft, the Boeing 707s, as well the completion of a new high-rise headquarters in Singapore. Boeing 737s were added to the fleet soon after.[citation needed] In 1970, the airline began what turned out to be very lengthy negotiations aimed at obtaining approval to operate services to the US.[9]
Incorporation and growth
MSA ceased operations in 1972, and both Singapore Airlines and Malaysian Airlines System commenced operations in its place. The reason for this development was strategic: Singapore wanted to increase its international routes, but Malaysia wanted to develop its domestic network before moving on to international routes.[10][11][12] Singapore Airlines kept all of MSA's Boeing 707s and 737s, and retained the international routes out of Singapore as well as the existing corporate headquarters in the city, with J.Y. Pillay, former joint chief of MSA, as its first chairperson. Female flight attendants continued to wear the sarong kebaya uniform, which had been first introduced in 1968. A local start-up advertising company, Batey Ads was given the right to market the airline, eventually selecting the sarong and kebaya-clad air stewardesses as an icon for the airline and calling them Singapore Girls. Its new name, callsign SIA and blue-yellow livery was officiated 1 July 1972.[13]
SIA expanded almost overnight after the split from MSA in 1972, adding cities in the Indian subcontinent and Asia to its network, and new airliners, including Boeing 747s, to its fleet. The first two 747s arrived in the summer of 1973 and were deployed on the lucrative Singapore-Hong Kong-Taipei-Tokyo (Haneda Airport) run. As of 1976, SIA had an all-Boeing fleet of 21 aircraft: 5 Boeing 737-100s, 11 Boeing 707-300s, and 5 Boeing 747-200s. The airline's passenger network covered 28 cities in 23 countries, ranging from London in the north west to Auckland in the south east. The 737s flew regional services, including most of the company's 52 flights per week to Kuala Lumpur. The larger airliners operated on longer distance routes. Flights to London were operated daily by 747s, departing from Singapore International Airport at Paya Lebar at 8.30 pm each night, but with a variety of flight numbers and routings. On Tuesday and Saturday nights at 9.00 pm, a 707 flight departed for Amsterdam.[14]
That year, SIA also operated daily 747 flights to Tokyo, daily 707 flights to Osaka, and daily flights to Sydney using a mix of 747s and 707s. Other flights went more frequently to Jakarta, Bangkok and Hong Kong, and less frequently to Perth, Melbourne and Auckland. The 707s were the company's workhorses; they flew 189 passenger flights per week. One of the 707s was configured as a 'pure' freighter, and each week it operated three out and back cargo services, to Amsterdam, Los Angeles and Paris, respectively. However, SIA passenger services to the US were still three years away.[14]
In August 1976, negotiations between SIA and the US Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) over possible SIA services to the US stalled over the key issue of the route any such services could take. SIA wanted to operate via Tokyo, the most lucrative transit point at the time, but the CAB thought that such a routing would have too significant an effect on the profits of SIA's US-based competitor, Pan Am. The CAB reportedly insisted that SIA would have to fly "in parallel" with Pan Am services to Singapore to earn approval, on a Singapore – Guam – Honolulu – San Francisco routing.[9]
The following year, 1977, was SIA's 30th anniversary.[9] To mark the occasion, the airline announced in late 1976 that it would be sponsoring the second running of the London–Sydney Marathon car rally, which was to take place in August-September 1977.[15] In March 1977, negotiations between SIA and the CAB were resumed, and in August 1977 it was reported that the airline had placed an order for four McDonnell Douglas DC-10s.[16] The same month, SIA took delivery of its first Boeing 727-200 Advanced, flying the aircraft on its inaugural service from Singapore to Manila. The B727 was SIA's successor to the B737-100s that it had inherited from MSA.[17] In late September 1977, at the end of seven rounds of negotiations, SIA and the CAB finally agreed that the airline could operate passenger services to the US, on a route to San Francisco via Hong Kong, Guam and Honolulu, initially three times per week, and increasing to five times per week by 1980.[9]
In December 1977, British Airways and SIA shared a Concorde for flights between London and Singapore via Bahrain. The aircraft, BA's Concorde G-BOAD, was painted in Singapore Airlines livery on the port side and British Airways livery on the starboard side.[18][19] The service was discontinued after 4 days and three return flights because of noise complaints from the Malaysian government;[20] it was reinstated on a new route bypassing Malaysian airspace. Then, India too cited problems with the boom and did not allow Concorde from reaching supersonic speeds in Indian airspace. Determined to make the route a success, British Airways and Singapore Airlines resumed flights on 24 January 1979, this time avoiding Malaysian airspace as well as Indian's. However, the service was discontinued for good on 1 November 1980. The two carriers cited decreasing traffic as one of the reasons, with the route estimated to be costing them around £2m a year.[21][22][23]
| Year | Traffic |
|---|---|
| 1972 | 1,413 RPMs |
| 1973 | 2,944 RPKs |
| 1975 | 5,104 RPKs |
| 1979 | 12,041 RPKs |
| 1985 | 21,676 RPKs |
| 1990 | 31,270 RPKs |
| 1995 | 48,400 RPKs |
| 2000 | 70,795 RPKs |
Meanwhile, SIA extensively publicised and then introduced its new passenger services to the US. The marketing campaign, using the slogan "California here we come", included the painting of the slogan on many of SIA's airliners from July 1978. SIA initially planned to operate the US services using new Boeing 747-200 'Super B' aircraft, but the new jets were not going to arrive until approximately September 1979. Thus, when the airline inaugurated the route in April 1979, it did so with its new fleet of DC-10s, three of which had entered service. Operation of the first few of the US flights was hampered by a severe aviation fuel shortage in the US, due to production cuts by Iran. Then, on 25 May 1979, shortly after the fuel shortage had abated, an American Airlines DC-10 crashed in Chicago, causing 273 fatalities. Soon afterwards, and as a consequence of the crash, the US Federal Aviation Administration banned the flying of DC-10s in US airspace. SIA therefore had to switch its new US services to operation by 707s until late August 1979, when its new Boeing 747-200 'Super Bs' took over the route. The airline also sold all of its DC-10s by late 1983.[9]
On 12 May 1981 at the stroke of midnight, Singapore Airlines' first ferry flight from London Heathrow Airport to the new Singapore Changi Airport . This flight was officially the world's first nonstop British commonwealth flight from London to Singapore. It was also Singapore Changi Airport's (including Terminal 1) very first commercial aviation flight with its first commercial plane, with Singapore Airlines SQ140 touching down at 00:00:00 Singapore Time/17:00:00 London Time with 140 passengers from London.
The 1980s saw the opening of the new airport and SIA corporate headquarters at Changi, along with expanded SIA services to United States, Canada, and additional European cities, with Madrid becoming the first Hispanic city to be served by the airline. Boeing 747-300s were leased and introduced into the SIA fleet in the early 1980s and named 'Big Tops'.[citation needed] The 747-300s replaced the 747-200s on all trans-pacific routes as well as the prime European destinations. Again a short-term affair was begun with a few Boeing 757s later followed by the addition of Airbus A310s and Airbus A300s The A310s became the Asian regional workhorse of the fleet, with the small A310-200 fleet serving until the late 1990s, and the much larger A310-300 fleet serving into the 2000s. In 1989, the first of 50 B747-400s was added to the fleet. The Airbus A340-300s augmented the 747-400s on long-range routes to Spain, Zürich, Copenhagen, San Francisco and cities not suitable for 747 service. Services extended to southern Africa in the 1990s when the airline began flights to Johannesburg in South Africa; Cape Town and Durban were later added. The 1990s also saw the opening of Terminal 2 in Changi Airport in 1991; all flight operations later moved to the new terminal. Police raided SIA's offices in Germany for offering tickets that were priced at such a low level they were allegedly illegal. The airline called a press conference condemning the police, which led to the raid being stopped.[24]
