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CLASS WARS


A new 'class war' B


For years, Asia held the mantle of 'World's Best Airlines', setting the benchmark for hospitality and quality. Today the Middle East has not only caught up, but is threatening to overtake in this ‘class war’. Jeremy Clark asks: what will the winning formula be?


ack in the Good Old Days in the 50s and 60s the 'Queen of The Skies' was BOAC. By 1968 Pan Am and TWA dominated the globe, flying to over 140 countries. Service standards were


set by these famous brands together with SAS and Swissair, and luxury air travel seemed like it would stay that way for ever. Then in the 1980s a new threat to the world of glamorous air travel arrived with Singapore Airlines. The move to Singapore Changi Airport from Paya Lebar on July 1,1981 was a big event and the first Singapore Airlines' A300 Superbus went into service in February 1981 followed by the B747-300 in 1983. The period through to the 90s saw BOAC, PAN AM and finally TWA all disappear as brands, and along came Cathay Pacific and Thai Airways who, together with SQ, made South East Asia the centre setting the standards of luxury air travel. For years, Asia held the mantle of 'World's Best


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Airlines', with the Singapore Girl, Thai’s 'Smooth As Silk', Cathay Pacific and other Asian carriers benchmarking onboard hospitality and quality ever higher, especially in the premium classes. Notwithstanding the rise of the LCCs, interruptions


through politics, disease outbreaks and terrorist attacks, this was the status of things into the 21st century. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, things were changing fast but for different reasons. With the advent of extended range aircraft, famous stop-over locations like Muscat, Dubai and Abu Dhabi were over-flown and lost huge volumes of traffic. The region’s premium brand airlines in the 70s to 90s were Gulf Air and MEA, but they lost market share to their Asian rivals as SQ invested billions into the new 747-400 MegaTops, leaving everyone in the ME staring at the skies wondering where everyone had gone. Something had to be done – and it was. On


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