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
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing