I’m now over half way through my isolation or as they call it in Singapore, the Stay at Home Notice (SHN) and typing quickly as I can. I would also like to apologise if I repeat myself as I didn’t get a chance to read through this and clean it up as much as I’d like to.
When Singapore Airlines announced the first of its capacity cuts on 17 March, I thought I would still take my original flight at the end of April as it wasn’t apparent which flights had been removed from the schedule. However, later that day SQ sent me an email telling me the original flight had been cancelled and I asked my travel agent was to do and they said that there were no SQ flights at all in April. Wait, what?! No flights at all!?!? I checked on the SQ’s website and there were flights which confused both me and the travel agent. A couple of days later it became clear why.
On 19 March, SIA and Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it was putting together a program to bring back Singaporeans (citizens and PRs) back to Singapore. I was about to jump at the chance, but I read on and it was clear that they were going to prioritise students. I realised that I was lucky enough to have a place to stay in the UK. Given that universities, by the time, had almost completely shut, some international students were being turfed out of their accommodation and some just didn’t have a lot of local support networks. And while SQ had already by the end of March put out its new schedule for April flights, I decided to wait it out for a few weeks so that students could get home first.
This might well have been the wrong choice. By the time it got to the end of March, it became clear the situation in the UK had become a lot worse. Not only were cases and deaths rising fast, the Prime Minister, first was diagnosed with COVID-19 on 27 March, but about a week later, he had then been admitted to ICU!
Fortunately, I was staying away from the urban centres and in a relatively quiet village so there was not a lot of opportunity bump into other people. Nevertheless, I felt I should try to get back to Singapore as close to my scheduled date as possible. Taking a look at the flight schedule it was apparent they had really pared back their services to Europe. They were going to be running a flight to London every two-to-four days.
So, I had to make a decision – take the earliest flight out or a flight later in the month. My concern was the UK was in the midst of a surge in cases. Bear in mind that 31 March was about a week after the first lockdown in the UK took place. Spreading of the virus could still be taking place with people who were asymptomatic (not showing symptoms). From looking at other countries it took months for them to get back under control after locking down. Therefore, the risk was that people would be getting on the flight who were infected and I could also be infected. The other side of this argument was that there was unlikely to be a lot of demand for these flights and there was a risk that the flights might be cancelled again! In the end I just decided since my original flight date of 27 April was still on the schedule, I would take that flight. Simple.
Originally the plane was supposed to be a 777 (possibly an ER), but when I went to select my seats about 2 weeks before the flight, it had chanced to a A350. I guess it made sense; the 777 has a first class, and has more business class rows, while the A350 has the same number of economy rows. It seems logical that during the crisis there would be almost no business travel (let alone first class).
And this is what greeted me when selecting a seat for the flight. I had never ever seen a seat map so empty before. It shouldn't have been a surprise but it was still enough to take your breath away. Including me, according to the map, there were only 3 other people travelling in business. There were probably other passengers and they simply hadn't selected their seats.
So, I was now booked, seat selected … the big question was … would my flight be cancelled?
While I will try to be as swift as possible writing up, it will be slightly delayed. In the meantime, you can see a more live version of my journey on Inst-spam [Feel free to look and
not follow, I’m not sponsored or anything]
https://www.instagram.com/gl0betrekka/