Info on the Singapore Airlines Chicago flight (costs, cheapest)

[ParaguaneroSwag]

I'm interested in the former flight on Singapore Airlines that flew through Chicago. Where it was Chicago-Singapore via Amsterdam. When did the flight begin operations and when did it end? Also does anyone have any idea why Singapore Airlines ended Chicago service? I just thought if a Houston-Singapore via Moscow flight would work, a Chicago-Singapore via Amsterdam could work as well.

[emathias]

First, I can't find info about Singapore Air running flights out of Chicago under their own flag, but I'll assume that you're correct and that they did at some time.

Currently, via codeshare, you can still book a flight with Singapore Airlines via San Francisco or JFK with Virgin America or JetBlue operating the domestic portions of the flights. My guess is that, if they ever did operate domestic legs themselves from Chicago to another city before jumping to Singapore, it just wasn't profitable for them to operate it compared to the flexible costs of code-share and they didn't see enough traffic to justify a direct flight. A lot of times an initial domestic collector flight can be a test-run to see if creating a direct route can be profitable. There are no non-stop Chicago to Singapore flights, so the competition of 1-stop flights was probably stiff enough to make running their own flights uneconomical and the total fliers between Chicago and Singapore probably didn't justify creating a non-stop.

Very few people really care that much who their carrier is. Business travelers might, and some avid non-business travelers might, but for casual fliers the cost savings of taking the cheapest flight for long-distance flights outweighs the advantage of loyalty miles, so for a smaller carrier like Singapore adding Chicago isn't necessarily a big win for them.