Singapore Airlines Ltd (SIA) plans to turn one of its grounded jumbo jets into a pop-up restaurant and offer home-delivered airplane food as part of a series of initiatives to try and re-engage people who have been unable to travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With no domestic network, the city-state’s national carrier has been financially battered by curbs on international travel and has laid off about one-fifth of its staff.
The airline yesterday also said that it would offer tours of its training center and flight simulator experiences, but scrapped an initial idea to follow a growing trend in Asia for scenic flights following a backlash on environmental grounds.
“With COVID-19 drastically reducing the number of flights operated by the SIA Group, we have created unique activities that would allow us to engage with our fans and customers during this time,” Singapore Airlines chief executive officer Goh Choon Phong (吳俊鵬) said.
Those who wish to dine aboard the double-decker A380, the world’s largest passenger aircraft, can choose between different cabin classes and menus designed by international chefs.
Customers are to be given goodie bags and those who dine in traditional clothing would receive additional gifts.
If customers opt to have the airplane food delivered to their home, they would receive welcome videos, guides on how to heat and plate the dishes, and a “specially curated playlist to recreate the SIA onboard experience,” the airline said.
Earlier this month, Thai Airways International PCL transformed the cafeteria of its Bangkok headquarters into an airline-themed restaurant, decked out with airplane seats and cabin crew members in full uniform.
With the aviation industry in deep crisis, several carriers — including in Taiwan, Australia and Japan — have been offering short flights that start and end at the same airport to raise cash.
They are designed for travel-starved people eager to fly at a time of virus-related restrictions, and have proved surprisingly popular.
Environmental advocates voiced opposition to Singapore Airlines launching “flights to nowhere,” with group SG Climate Rally saying that they would encourage “carbon-intensive travel for no good reason.”
Additional reporting by AFP
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts