Step aboard the flight to nowhere — Singapore Airlines is planning trips that start and end at the SAME airport in a bid to boost business and bring frequent flyers back, Your Content can report.
The flights ‘to nowhere’ are set to take off by the end of October and may include staycations at the city’s hotels, shopping vouchers and limousine ferry rides, the Straits Times reported.
Each flight is expected to last around three hours and will both set off and land at Singapore’s famous Changi airport.
Singapore Airlines Group, which do not offer domestic flights, has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic and announced it was cutting around 4,300 jobs on Thursday.
The domestic market would be the first to see a recovery following the pandemic, leading the company to announce its airlines will operate a smaller fleet on a reduced network in the coming years.
Stefan Wood, director at aircraft charter firm Singapore Air Charter, reportedly approached Singapore Airlines about offering flights to nowhere using the Airbus A-350 planes.
But talks have allegedly stalled recently as Singapore Airlines signalled interest in going ahead with offering the unique flights on its own.
A strange survey by Singapore Air Charter reportedly showed 75 per cent of 308 people were willing to buy tickets.
The most popular price that 45 per cent of participants were willing to pay for an economy class seat was $288 (£225).
Sixty per cent of respondents said they would prefer the flight to last for two hours, rather than the expected three hours.
Mr Wood told the Straits Times: ‘As travel opens, the novelty will certainly wear off. However, when bundled with a staycation, limo transfers and airport shopping experiences, people will lap it up.’
But Singapore Airlines is not the first airline to offer trips that land at the same airport that they departed from.
Japan’s ANA Holdings sold tickets for charter flights to nowhere last month, while two Taiwan carriers launched similar campaigns.
Starlux Airlines introduced a ‘pretending to go abroad’ journey while EVA Airways filled all 309 seats on a Father’s Day flight.
In July, Singapore Airlines Group reported a 1.12billion Singapore dollar (£639million) net loss for the three months up until June – the company’s largest quarterly loss.
The International Air Transport Association also said it does not expect passenger traffic to recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2024, according to Bloomberg.