Singapore Airlines earthbound A380 dining sells out in minutes

Who would have thought airplane food had such appeal?

Singapore Airlines is adding more dates for its “Restaurant A380” dining experience after reservations filled up within minutes on the first day.

“We  are grateful for the extremely strong support from our customers, and we look forward to welcoming them to Restaurant A380 @Changi,” Lee Lik Hsin, Singapore Airlines’ executive vice-president said in a statement.

The A380 restaurant is one of several experiments Singapore Airlines is trying in order to boost business as the coronavirus pandemic wrecks demand for air travel.

An A380 can normally seat nearly 500 passengers, but SIA only uses about half the seats for dining to adhere to the pandemic guidelines in place for restaurants.

Diners who need more elbow room than a tray table affords can have Singapore Airlines’ first-class and business-class meals delivered to their homes, where they can stretch out a bit and toss scraps to the dog.

Tours of the SIA Training Centre offers visitors the chance to chat with pilots and cabin crew about their experiences and visit the airline’s flight simulators for a chance to take an A380 up.

Grooming workshops conducted by the airline’s cabin crew trainers are also available.

SIA launched the new experiences after posting a roughly S$816 million loss from April to June as it grappled with a drop in demand because of the coronavirus crisis.

Since it first took to the skies in 2007, the A380 super-jumbo has proved to be a huge hit with passengers, but it never really took off with airlines.

Now that Covid-19 has devastated international aviation, airlines have already started prematurely retiring the double decker.

So, an earthbound meal on board one at Changi may be one of the few remaining opportunities for earthlings to experience the A380 before the last one flies off into retirement.