Singapore Airlines To Launch Flights To Nowhere
2 min readSingapore Airlines To Launch Flights To Nowhere
This is some travel news from our neighbour down south, Singapore. Singapore Airlines (SIA) to launch flights to nowhere. This means flights will depart from and land in Changi Airport from October 2020 in hope to give the airlines business a lift.
As reported on The Straits Times, SIA is working towards launching this option for domestic passengers – dubbed “flights to nowhere” – by end-October.
SIA also plans to explore a partnership with the Singapore Tourism Board to allow interested passengers to partially pay for such flights with tourism credits that will be given out by the Government.
Singapore Airlines Flights To Nowhere takes about three hours. It will from Changi Airport and fly and probably circle around the region for three hours and land back to the same airport.
SIA has been badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic like many other airlines around the world including Malaysia.
The SIA Group, which also includes SilkAir and budget carrier Scoot, announced on Thursday (Sept 10) that it will cut around 4,300 positions, with an estimated 2,400 employees expected to be affected after taking into account previous measures like a recruitment freeze.
Interestingly, there is a survey of 308 people conducted and 75 per cent were willing to pay for flights to nowhere.
Most of them (45%) willing to pay for an economy class seat was $288 while 40% said they were willing to pay $588 for a business class seat and 60% said they prefer the flight to last for two hours.
Should airlines in Malaysia follow this business model? At the moment, there are specific International flights to bring back Malaysians from abroad. On top of that, there is also increase of domestic tourism and you can see many Malaysians starting to fly to local destinations like Langkawi, Penang, Sabah and Sarawak. We consider lucky as we are still able to fly locally while Singaporeans might have to pay Singapore Airlines To Fly Flights To Nowhere. Will you pay for fly Flights To Nowhere by Singapore Airlines?
I don’t think Malaysia should adopt this practice. It is bad that Singapore decided to waste fuel and increase pollution without any purpose or destination in sight. It would be better to create a cafe in the airport mimicking the airplane rather than flying the plane.