Since there's so much talk about @SingaporeAir, I thought i'd share a story I came across a long time ago about how the airline was even started, its history, its mission, and its vision Long tweet warning ahead ↓ =============================== On 𝗢𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟵𝟳𝟮, 𝗟𝗲𝗲 𝗞𝘂𝗮𝗻 𝗬𝗲𝘄 𝗧𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗳𝗳 𝗢𝗳 𝗔 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱-𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗔𝗶𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗡𝗼 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗛𝗮𝘀 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗧𝗼 𝗔𝗻 𝗔𝗶𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲. "I set up Singapore Airlines to make profits. If it cannot make profits, I will close it down." The airline had TEN planes. 22 destinations. A name that was barely three months old. And a prime minister who meant every word. This is the story of how a tiny island with no domestic flights built the best airline in the world. And why it matters to anyone who's ever looked at where they are and wondered if they could reach further. =============================== Before Singapore Airlines existed, there was Malayan Airways. It was formed in 1937, on paper, by three companies: British Imperial Airways, the Ocean Steamship Company of Liverpool, and the Straits Steamship Company of Singapore. They had a plan. They had a name. They had a certificate of incorporation. What they didn't have was a reason to fly. Another airline, Wearne's Air Service, was already running the only route that mattered, Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. The first chairman of Malayan Airways, a man named Frank Lane, looked at the numbers and decided the market couldn't hold two carriers. So Malayan Airways did something remarkable for an airline. It didn't fly. For ten years. From 1937 to 1947. An airline that existed on paper, grounded by a competitor it couldn't beat and a war it couldn't survive. World War II came. Japan occupied Singapore. Commercial aviation stopped. And by the time the war ended, Wearne's had gone bankrupt. The obstacle removed itself. Not because Malayan Airways outfought it. Because it outlasted it. On 1 May 1947, a small plane, an Airspeed Consul, took off from Singapore on a scheduled flight to Kuala Lumpur. Six seats. That was the first flight of what would eventually become Singapore Airlines. SIX SEATS. The entire aircraft couldn't carry enough passengers to fill a single row on today's A380. For the next twenty-five years, the airline kept changing its name because the country it belonged to kept changing its shape. Malayan Airways became Malaysian Airways in 1963, when Malaysia was formed. Then it became Malaysia-Singapore Airlines in 1966, after Singapore separated. Two countries. One airline. Two governments with different ideas about what an airline should do. Singapore wanted to go international. Malaysia wanted to stay domestic. By 1971, the differences were, in the words of Singapore's Finance Minister Hon Sui Sen, "irreconcilable." So they split. And here's the part most people don't know. When they divided the assets, Singapore got the Boeing fleet, the headquarters, the international routes, and the offices in eighteen countries. It also got a problem nobody else wanted. Singapore had no domestic market. Zero. A country so small you can drive from one end to the other in forty-five minutes. There was no Singapore-to-Singapore route. No short regional hops to fill the seats on quiet days. Every single flight had to be international. Every route had to compete with airlines from countries ten, twenty, fifty times its size. The airline was incorporated on 28 January 1972 as Mercury Singapore Airlines. Malaysia objected to the name, so they changed it. On 27 June 1972, it became Singapore Airlines. And on 1 October 1972, SIA flew its first three flights. One to London. One to Sydney. And one coming home. Three flights. Ten planes. Twenty-two destinations. And a prime minister standing at the inaugural dinner telling a room full of airline staff: make money, or I'm pulling the plug. That's where most stories would end. Small country, impossible odds, doomed to fail. That's where this story BEGINS. SIA didn't compete on size. It couldn't. It competed on something else.