Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines has been in the news lately for the best possible reasons. The arrival of the spanking new Airbus A380 in Sydney recently made headlines, and rightly so. As the first airline to fly this amazing mega-jet, Singapore Airlines has chalked up another score on the board.

Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to share another important advance with this airline which marks its 60th anniversary in 2007.

Everyone loves to make jokes about 'airline food'. In some cases there is a good reason for this as the logistics of serving haute cuisine at 39,000 feet often causes the results to fall as flat as an airline breakfast omelette.

Yet Singapore Airlines has decided to address this problem head-on by involving top chefs from around the world to produce World Gourmet Cuisine for the airline, and this is what I was invited to experience firsthand. Our whirlwind trip took us first to Singapore where our group was taken to see the staff training centre at SIA headquarters followed by a tour of the enormous kitchens which mastermind and produce the food eaten aboard flights every day.

From there we were flown to Beijing for a meeting of the International Culinary Panel composed of top world chefs Georges Blanc (France), Sanjeev Kapoor (India), Sam Leong (Singapore), Matt Moran (Australia), Yoshihiro Murata (Japan), Nancy Oakes (USA), Alfred Portale (USA), Gordon Ramsay (UK), and Yeung Koon Yat (Hong Kong).

It was a great opportunity to hear the commitment and enthusiasm of these chefs as they spoke. Their dishes can be found on the menus of the various classes on the aircraft, and certainly the ones I tried on board as well as those prepared for us at meals during the weekend were exceptional.

But a great meal is always better paired with fine wine, and Singapore Airlines has also made sure that they have enlisted the help of experts - Michael Hill-Smith (Australia), Karen MacNeil (USA), and Steven Spurrier (UK).

Let's hope that other airlines follow the lead of Singapore Airlines and begin to take the service of onboard meals more seriously. After all providing quality airline meals is no joking matter.

www.singaporeair.com

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