Glamorous evening on a plane
This cannot be true. The Guardian:
Diners have rushed to pay up to £360 per head to eat a meal on a stationary plane, in the latest sign of public appetite to recreate the onboard experience without travelling.
Who would do that???
Being on a plane is an absolute nightmare. The only thing that makes it just barely endurable is wanting to go where the plane is moving you*. Doing it for the sake of doing it is inconceivable.
*Actually, also the view if there is any.
Singapore Airlines launched a waiting list after tickets rapidly sold out for two weekends of sittings onboard two stationary A380 superjumbos, with meals at seats and the chance to watch a movie, albeit no longer in-flight.
Are there children behind each seat, kicking them throughout?
Guests will get a meal from the standard Singapore Airlines menu, with S$642 (£360) buying the full works in a suite – or £30 per head for the tray in economy. Frequent flyers could also cash in points towards a meal.
All tickets were snapped up in less than half an hour for the pop-up Restaurant A380, the airline told Bloomberg. About half of the 471 seats on each of the airline’s double-decker superjumbos, parked at Changi airport, were expected to be available with social distancing in place.
People are crazy.
Words fail me. There are none, cannot be any words, to suit the occasion.
Do they overbook, and force people with reservations to leave and come back the next day?
Do you have to go through security theater?
Do you have to wait in interminable lines to enter?
Is your sitting subject to unexplained delays?
Is the movie interrupted by constant announcements?
Does the plane bounce suddenly as you bring your drink to your lips?
Do you lose a night’s sleep and have your schedule thrown off by several hours?
Do you have to go through even more interminable lines at the end of the evening?
Do they send your coat to Atlanta?
Because otherwise, it’s just not the same.
Seat kickers are the worst, even in movie theaters, and not just kids. I have (embarrassingly) lost my temper over that more than a few times. Rudest thing ever. I’ll take the back row please, omfg. :P
For what it’s worth, I believe I flew Singapore Airlines once, and it was a really nice experience as airlines go, even in economy class. But still wouldn’t catch me signing up for this.
twiliter #3, tell them I’ll show you what it’s like!
twiliter, the screaming kids are almost as bad as the kicking ones. On a flight back from Frankfort to Chicago, we must have been in the screaming kids section. There were points where I wanted to stuff the kids in the overhead bins.
Another thing to add to WaM’s list:
Is there going to be a man-spreader sitting on each side of you, so you have to find a way to retract your arms into your body and fold your legs up into some abnormal shape because there is no place else to put them?
I don’t want airline food* when I’m flying, why the Hell would I want it on a stationary plane? For the cost of that £30 tray in economy (which, I’m reliably informed, is little different from the trays one is served while in ((UK)) police custody) I could make a spectacular three-course dinner for my wife and me. The £360 option would more-than cover our usual food bill for a couple of months.
I can’t remember where I heard this but a general rule of airline food is: if it’s brown, it’s meat; if it’s white, it’s sweet; if it’s grey, don’t eat.
The thing about airline food (when it’s provided at all) is that it’s a kind of entertainment, even though it’s crap as food. You have a little tray of toys to play with, and it distracts you from the agony of boredom and discomfort for a few minutes. But…how perverse would it be to get voluntarily on a plane so that you can get the little distraction from the discomfort and boredom of being on a plane?
When I was locked up in here for 8 days in the smoke week I did everything I could think of to distract from the confinement and lack of fresh air and exercise, and NONE OF IT DID A DAMN BIT OF GOOD. I cannot wrap my little brain around this sit on a grounded plane for the low low price of £30 lark.
@6 Exactly, I really blew it a couple of times just like that. Of course I wait patiently for them to do the right thing, and so I don’t say anything until I’m whistling like a kettle. lol
Singapore Airlines actually does jolly good food. Not good enough to want to eat it in a stationary restaurant, of course. But as plane food it’s nice. I also liked the food on Etihad Airlines. Haven’t flown for a few years now, and it is most unlikely I ever shall again. Coming home from Australia in 2013 was the last time I was allowed to fly long-haul, and then only with oxygen. Now I’m getting to the point of needing oxygen at sea-level, it would be extremely foolish to fly.
@8 I can walk up to the neighborhood restaurant and have dinner 3 nights in a row for £30. No driving to the airport or riding MARTA there, no lines, plenty of legroom, excellent food, optional outdoor seating, and most importantly, no seat kickers! ;)
twiliter, #11; and no eating off a plastic sectioned tray. If you want to make bad food taste even worse just put it directly onto plastic and re-heat it.
Just a thought: do the airlines still provide sick-bags on these going nowhere planes?
Even in business class, the food isn’t exactly Michelin-starred restaurant quality, although it is better than the slop they call food in economy. Flying business class is the only way I can manage the 30 hour journey from the US to Africa. But I wouldn’t do it voluntarily, without going anywhere. If I could teleport from here to there, I totally would, and skip the “restaurant experience” altogether.
AoS @12 Maybe that’s the draw, restaurants don’t have barf bags tucked into the chairs. :P
Sorry Dave @5, my reply @9 was the reply to you @5, not @6. Ikn @6, I meant to commisserate about trans-Atlantic (not to be confused with cis-Atlantic) flights with obnoxious children, indeed very annoying. As long as they don’t kick my seat. ;)
People will get nostalgic for anything. When they stopped selling Twinkies for a while, people started coming up with recipes for homemade Twinkies. Other people pointed out that Twinkies were originally a poor approximation of homemade cake that had a long shelf life, so it seemed kind of silly to be doing a homemade copy of a poor industrial copy of a homemade item. But people still did it.
Yeh but…Twinkies are, like, Sacher torte compared to sitting in a parked plane for the thrill of it. If I had to choose at gunpoint between a Twinkie and sitting on a parked plane…
I think I could even choke down a fried Twinkie in that scenario.
You can now buy airline food in the shops to ‘enjoy’ at home!
https://boingboing.net/2020/10/14/since-when-did-airplane-food-become-palatable-finnair-plane-food-now-in-markets.html