After more than two years in the doldrum, I did something extraordinary. I flew.
It was a short flight, to Jakarta, but no flight is too short to measure the freedom which the skies, and only the skies, offer.
The service on board was excellent. It was quintessential Singapore Airlines. SIA has lost nothing of its charm and discipline because of the disruption created by the coronavirus
The food was excellent, the service exemplary — attentive without being intrusive, friendly without being pally. I experienced a keen sense of deja vu, for this was the SIA experience to which I had grown accustomed over the years. For me, a perfectionist, it is the best airline in the world.
Indeed, the very fact of entering an SIA aircraft provided a fleeting but genuine moment of national self-recognition. This airline flies Singapore’s flag. Every journey on it emplaces me a little more in Singapore no matter how many thousands of feet away I am from it, high up in the air. In a sense, Singapore is wherever SIA is. It is good to be wherever Singapore is. Getting to a destination is to have arrived there with a bit of Singapore tucked into the luggage.
It is the freedom of the skies that makes this experience possible. Honestly, there is nothing like flying: no traffic jams on the roads, no stations at which the train stops with a jerk exactly when you are falling asleep, no mighty waves to suddenly splash the champagne in your girlfriend’s face (just as you are about to propose to her) aboard a once-in-a-lifetime cruise trip. Yes, there is turbulence in the air, but you are warned of it dutifully in advance. When the skies are peaceful, as they mostly are, you simply waft your way through time, serenely unaware of the tremendous scientific speed at which your aircraft is travelling.
All this after two years. Two wasted years, my feet tied to the ground, my freedom grounded by the cruel laws of gravity. Even a short flight to Jakarta has renewed in me a childhood sense of wonder.
The wonder of freedom from gravity. The joy of flying. The exhilaration of belonging to the freedom of the skies. Next: Dubai and New York. Yes, I am back in the skies #singaporeairlines
