A Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300 at Changi Airport. Photo / Grant Bradley
A Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300 at Changi Airport. Photo / Grant Bradley
Singapore Airlines says its passengers are eating and drinking more during the travel recovery, and the pandemic has given it a chance to tweak what it offers.
The airline says travellers throughout its planes who have flocked back have been eating and drinking to celebrate travel and to enjoy spendinglonger with their masks off – when those were required on planes.
"The consumer has an expectation that post-Covid they want better or more, which is understandable," said the airline's director of food and beverage, Antony McNeil.
"People are genuinely happy to be back in the skies and indulging a bit."
The airline is now running at about 70 per cent of pre-pandemic capacity. In the depths of the Covid crisis for airlines, around April 2020, it was flying just 4 per cent of its network.
Betty Wong, Singapore Airlines divisional vice president inflight food services and design with Antony McNeil SIA director of food and beverage. Photo / Grant Bradley
It runs a "Book the Cook" service in Suites, First, Business and Premium Economy and has tweaked the offering during the past two years.
It has also gone to the streets of Singapore to develop a hawker food programme, and tweaks made to its classic French lobster thermidor exemplify the changes to its menus.
"During Covid we redeveloped the recipe, took out some of the cream and cheese to make it lighter and enhanced the lobster with more herbs and spices through the stock," said McNeil.
The lobster meat from Western Australia (much like a New Zealand crayfish) is cooked in a cream sauce, enhanced with Cognac and Dijon mustard with the addition of button mushrooms and herbs. The lobster is returned to its shell and topped off with grated cheddar cheese and panko breadcrumbs. When it is "regenerated" in the sky, passengers enjoy the crunchy texture.
McNeil said the team working on the dish went through about a dozen iterations before arriving at the new recipe
"That's a lot of lobster to taste but we need to be sure we're authentic and the flavour is right," he said
"Lightening the lobster reflects the trend of healthier eating - not getting bloated, but being sustained during flight."
The airline will this year serve about 18,000 portions of lobster to passengers in Business Class and higher, on flights out of Singapore. McNeil says it tries to source the shellfish as close to Singapore as possible, but depending on the season will look to Canada and the United States.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) late last year launched its hawker street food promotion and now circulates around 12 dishes aboard its planes. The city state's hawker food culture has been UNESCO-recognised for its contribution to intangible culture.
Inflight services and design divisional vice-president Betty Wong said not all of the hawkers approached wanted to give away their secret recipes.
Food in Singapore Airlines' business class. Photo / Grant Bradley
"Some hawkers don't want to be in the programme because they want to hold to them," she said.
"As Singaporeans, we know what our favourite is, then we do the short list of every category of food."
The hawkers who did participate did it for fame and recognition.
"They are proud to be featured on Singapore Airlines and bring their brands to the world," said Wong.
The new-style lobster thermidor on board Singapore Airlines. Photo / Grant Bradley
During the pandemic, the airline expanded its "farm to plane" programme in the US to both Newark Liberty International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Greens for inflight meals are now grown 8km from the airport, instead of being flown 4228km from the West Coast.
SIA's AeroFarm greens are grown via a sustainable growing process termed "aeroponics", yielding 30 harvests per year (as compared to three harvests per year in a conventional farm) without pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.
Rather than using soil, seeds are grown indoors on a specialty growing cloth medium under LED light and with strict temperature and humidity controls as the plant roots are misted with precise amounts of water and nutrients. Produce can typically grow from seeds to fully mature plants in a few days, using 95 per cent less water and a fraction of the fertilisers used in conventional farming.
SIA is expanding its network quickly to meet strong demand, and like other airlines is subject to supply chain problems.
McNeil said there were no particular foods in short supply during the past winter, but there was a shortage of certain brands at some times.
He said the airline needed to be more nimble with the range of food it offers and its suppliers.
