You have to have good nerves to go on a long-haul trip to Asia, you also need a printer, advanced computer skills and a lot of patience. You don’t just walk to the gate with your vaccination certificate. Not even if you want to fly to Singapore in the new “Vaccinated Travel Lane” (VTL). Singapore Airlines’ first VTL machine started a new era on Tuesday at 10:10 p.m. from Frankfurt.
Anyone who flew to Asia in the past few months had to have very urgent reasons and usually had to go through a 14-day quarantine in a hotel. Many did not want to expect that. The new VTL regulation that Singapore has now introduced – roughly translated as a “travel lane for vaccinated people” – is intended to be a first step by the city-state to open up again.
A PCR test before departure is mandatory, but you still have to do another test on arrival in Singapore, which you have to have booked and paid for online beforehand. Everything a bit complicated. It is not necessary to understand all the rules that are drawn up for traveling abroad. But many of the rules in Germany are no longer understood.
The check-in staff in Frankfurt are turned towards and nervous at the same time, it’s new to them too. What do we need to have on paper? Is digital proof sufficient for other things? These are the questions that arise, but which can then also be clarified immediately. Traveling has suddenly become exciting and exclusive again – also for airline employees.
“After all, we’re back to 50 percent air traffic in the holiday season,” explains Alexander Zell, Fraport’s press spokesman in the new visitor center, which was opened last year in the void of the pandemic. The Germans flew to Mallorca when the Delta variant was already bypassing in Asia and the borders were tight. “Of course nobody knows what it will be like in autumn when business trips are missing.”
The tourists should come back, but especially the business travelers
Singapore Airlines is now only allowed to fly in guests from Germany and Brunei who are fully immunized, who have not left their country at least 21 days beforehand and who also meet a number of other requirements, the list of which would go beyond the scope and deter guests. The opposite is the intention. People should come back, the tourists, but above all of course the business travelers.
Singapore Airlines’ sales fell by 98 percent in the past financial year. The loss was in the billions. The Asian airlines were harder hit than the European ones by the Delta variant and “Zero Covid” strategies. India, Australia, Thailand and others kept inbound traffic to a minimum – all important destinations for Singapore Airlines. A green lane, a travel corridor with Hong Kong, was planned, but was discarded when the contagion numbers in Singapore went up. The airline has no internal market in the city-state that could have absorbed the business.
Shortly before it starts, perfectly styled flight attendants, the men in sharp suits, the women with banana updos, wave to the first VTL guests in front of the gate. It’s a special day. Singapore Airlines was always at the forefront of the world’s best airlines until the pandemic. After it was practically unable to take off from one day to the next, they thought about alternative concepts, about “flights to nowhere” that only take off from the city and land again. Via a restaurant in the style of the galley. But these were more ideas for customer loyalty, they could not have compensated for the loss of sales.
After all, the first VTL machine to take off from Frankfurt carries 106 booked passengers. First Class is fully occupied with four seats, 26 of 48 Business Class seats are occupied, and 15 of 24 Premium Eco and 55 of 184 Economy seats are occupied. Around a third of the occupancy rate, but more than doubling compared to non-VTL flights. Soon you will also be able to travel directly from Munich in this way. the Straits Times from Singapore meanwhile reports in real time from the first VTL flight, that’s how important the topic is. If you didn’t have to sleep with a face mask, it would be an extremely pleasant flight, a little detour around the airspace over Afghanistan, and after a little over 13 hours the approach would begin.
People in full body armor said “Welcome to Singapore”
Then in Singapore, which sometimes even makes Switzerland look like a developing country when it comes to organizational issues, everything is covered twice or three times. After landing, you walk past people in full-body protective clothing who mumble “Welcome to Singapore” through visors and face masks and take the temperature. Then all documents are presented again, QR codes are scanned, face and fingerprints are registered, and the app is activated for tracking. Not only vaccination opponents who love to travel, also data-sensitive people will not have a good time in Singapore in the future, as well as in most of the surrounding countries. The procedure is similar in Thailand. Not to speak of China.
It goes from one line to the next, from the document check to the pre-booked and prescribed PCR test upon arrival. Singapore continues to suffer from increasing numbers of infections despite tough restrictions. Even though the city-state is actually an island. Will the passengers bring the virus with them? Rather unlikely, because they are gently guided through the airport’s examination and test course to the means of transport that takes them to one of the hotels, where they have to wait in their room for the results of their PCR tests. And that for quite a while.
At least during that time you can interview Lee Lik Hsin at a Zoom conference, the Vice President of Singapore Airlines, who laughs a lot, even on topics that are no laughing matter. But moping up doesn’t help, so when asked why Germany and Brunei are the first countries to participate in the VTL program, Lee Lik Hsin replies: “I have no opinion on that – just hope. It’s up to you The government. We usually have flights to 70 countries, now there are two. Hopefully there will be more soon. “
“It’s an experiment,” says Vice President Lee Lik Hsin
And does he have an opinion on whether business trips, which after all made up a large part of the previous business, will ever come back? Where everything is now done by teleconference and initial investigations say it will never return to the old state? “There are also the first studies that show that nothing can replace a handshake. And that people feel zoom fatique,” says Lee Lik Hsin. With eight percent passenger occupancy, however, it would not go on in the long run, even if the cargo business is already going better. “Singapore is an international city, we have to open ourselves to the rest of the world.” The only question is whether the rest of the world can open up again soon. “It’s an experiment,” says Lee Lik Hsin, maybe in a month it’ll be easier. Maybe other countries can do the same.
After the conversation, it’s late in the evening in Singapore. The result of the PCR test is a long time coming, while outside the hotel window Singapore sparkles into the night and waits for visitors. You’re that close, but still not there.