Singapore Airlines’ regional wing SilkAir will be merged with its parent company in due course, after a S$100 million cabin upgrade that will see the installation of lie-flat Business Class seats and inflight entertainment in every seat onboard all current and future SilkAir aircraft.
These upgrades will begin from 2020 and the full merger will only take place when a sufficient number of aircraft have been fitted with the new products.
The move should be very well received as certain routes are now currently served by both Singapore Airlines and SilkAir, and the cabin products between the two are fairly disparate. For example, for the same price you could be flying to Male on an aircraft operated by either Singapore Airlines or SilkAir, but both with very different inflight experiences.
It will be exciting to see how the refreshed cabins will look, but lie-flat seats in Business Class on narrow body aircraft isn’t a completely new development, as these have been installed on board A321 aircraft operated by American Airlines and A320 aircraft operated by Qatar.
In any case, this move will greatly streamline the cabin offerings between Singapore Airlines and SilkAir, providing passengers with a more consistent inflight experience.