Singapore Airlines must be losing money hand over fist with these flights. No more than 20 passengers on a flight? Sure, fuel prices are low, but they had a full crew compliment for safety reasons and all the associated costs of housing and feeding them while they abroad. Not to mention the fees they still have to pay to airports and they are hedged at a higher fuel price.
It’s clear there are advantages with having the state involved in a key industry like the airline. With Temasek effectively underwriting the rights issue in March, it seems likely that as part of the deal, SQ had to keep flights running at least to certain core cities to be able to continue bringing Singaporeans back home. They are clearly losing money on these flights, of that there is no doubt.
Was this a business class experience? Obviously, there was no SilverKris lounge on the ground. If there had been, I would have turned up earlier and eaten my breakfast there. I know the lounge has its detractors, but I do like the SilverKris lounges – those that I have had the pleasure of going to. Of course, it is crowded in Singapore, but hey, it is a business. But the London lounge looks quite classy, in my uncouth opinion, so I missed not being able to spend some time there. And the food is usually reasonably good.
On board, there was no alcohol. While I don’t generally drink on flights. When I fly business, I do like to have a little tipple, especially just after I’ve boarded the plane (I find once I’m in the air, alcohol doesn’t like me). So I did miss that.
The crew was the crew. And I also know people find SQ crew quite robotic, but generally speaking I have never found that. Maybe that’s what people are looking for, so they see it. Or maybe I am looking for the face they aren’t robots, so that’s what I see. They also seemed a bit like they weren’t sure what to do. I mean they probably had never ever seen flights this empty before. And it showed when they kept asking me if I wanted more water!
Coming to the food. This was the most disappointing. The chicken was just one whole chicken breast. They should really have sliced it as it was very difficult to get into when I was eating it. Because it was one lump, it didn’t taste good at all. The breakfast was delicious as I said. Unhealthy as hell but delicious.
SQ has a habit of turning on and off the inflight announcements – especially when it came to turbulence, but this flight almost had no announcements outside of the regular welcome on board and we are about to land. There was a little burst about 3 hours before were landing due to turbulence.
Just a final comment. I can’t imagine any business continuing to run voluntarily when they are so clearly haemorrhaging cash as SQ probably is on these flights. It seems the only likely reason is because they are being told to by the government.
This being said, I for one am glad they continued to operate and get me back to Singapore.
Thanks a lot Singapore Airlines!!
(it really is one of the worst quality videos in the world).