1 In 7 still keen on a Singapore Airlines 'flight to nowhere': Are you?

Although the travel industry was undoubtedly hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, our national carrier seems to be weathering through the storm.

Despite our utter inability to leave the country this year, Singapore Airlines was nonetheless rated Singapore's top brand of 2020.

Perhaps this can be chalked up to SIA's innovative efforts during these turbulent times, such as their (unfortunately scrapped) plans to launch 'Flights to nowhere', followed by more recent 'grounded passengers' initiatives such as Restaurant A380@Changi and the 'Inside Singapore Airlines' experience.

According to a recent YouGov survey, while these initiatives have been met with mixed reactions, a sizeable portion of Singaporeans are at least interested in what Singapore Airlines has to offer.

Flights to nowhere

While SIA's plans for flights to nowhere were permanently, ahem, grounded by criticism about the proposed flights' environmental impact, one in seven (15 per cent) survey respondents indicated that they'd still be interested in boarding a flight to nowhere.

As expected, frequent flyers (namely, those who took more than five flights in 2019) are more likely to be interested than respondents who didn't fly at all last year (21 per cent vs 8 per cent).

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Plane restaurant, table for two?

Meanwhile, Restaurant A380@Changi – a dining experience aboard a parked A380 plane at Changi Airport, which was launched back in October, has garnered even more interest.

Although the plane restaurant only operated for two weekends, 20 per cent of survey respondents indicated their interest in a third round of in-plane dining.

However, SIA@Home, a parallel initiative where business class or first class meals are delivered to customers at home, along with tableware and flight amenities, has not been quite as well received, with only one in ten (11 per cent) respondents indicating an interest in this experience.

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Behind-the-scenes experiences

Last but not least, SIA recently hosted its "Inside Singapore Airlines" experience, consisting of a behind-the-scenes tour of the SIA training centre, along with several other add-ons.

Of these additional experiences, the flight simulator proved to be the most popular, with nearly half (48 per cent) interested in it, surpassing interest in the training centre tour itself (33 per cent), aka the actual base experience.

But really, when else would we get to fly a plane (and live out our childhood dreams of being a pilot)?

The junior pilot experience was the next most popular add-on (32 per cent), followed by the grooming workshop (22 per cent) and the wine tasting and junior cabin crew (both 20 per cent).

A third (33 per cent) of survey respondents indicated no interest in any of the experiences – guess they're waiting till we can actually fly again!

This article was first published in Wonderwall.sg.