Singapore—When the Covid-19 crisis is done, perhaps our most enduring memories will be of the kindness and thoughtfulness human beings extended to one another, in acts both big and small.
A group of six Singaporean students from the New Zealand School of Dance sang and danced for the Singapore Airlines (SIA) crew 30,000 feet in the air to say thank you for bringing them home. According to New Zealand website stuff.co.nz, this was the last SIA flight out of New Zealand.
Haruka Chan, Zi Yue Woo, Romaine Lee, Timothy Ching, Cherie Wong and Courtney Lim are all students at the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington, studying full-time classical ballet or contemporary dance, and are part of the thousands of Singaporeans who have made their way home due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a statement, the students said, “We shared our school’s waiata to thank the amazing cabin crew that took such a small group of us home over 10 hours, in what they said was a rescue flight, and the last one by Singapore Airlines out of NZ.”
A waiata is “a Maori song usually commemorative of some important event.”
The young people added that they wanted to show their support to the crew of SIA who had attended to them, especially in these challenging times.
In the video, they can be seen singing and dancing in an empty SIA cabin while the plane is midflight, and the video briefly pans to the cheering and applauding crew at the end.
Speaker of the Parliament Tan Chuan Jin shared the article from Stuff on his Facebook page early on Friday morning (Mar 27), writing, “What a lovely post to wake up to?! These youths rock. Not just because of their performance. But their sense of gratitude. ?? ‘Welcome home!’”
Mr Tan went on to say he had recently heard from one resident who has asked for help with “SIA ticket prices on another flight from UK,” who apparently was “unhappy SIA didn’t offer any discounts.”
The Speaker mentioned he did omit the fact that SIA “bleeding very very badly,” and did not engage further, although he was glad a way was found for this resident’s children to get home safely. “Too tired to engage in what would probably be a conversation that would only spiral downwards. Peace out. ✌️”
He ended his post with good wishes for the national carrier, writing, “Tks SQ! I know how much you guys have been doing to bring our Singaporeans home. Hang in there. Skies will clear and like Singapore, we’d fly and soar again!”
The airlines’ troubles were made known to the public earlier this week when it announced it was decreasing its flight capacity by 96 percent through the end of next month. Furthermore, out of its 196 planes, 185 have been grounded.
Singapore’s national carrier has called the current crisis “greatest challenge that the SIA Group has faced in its existence”.
On Thursday (Mar 27), SIA announced that its goal is to raise as much as S$15 billion to address financial woes by issuing new shares to its existing shareholders as well as issuing mandatory convertible bonds. This action will be supported by state-investment fund Temasek, which controls 55.46 percent of SIA’s shares. -/TISG
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