Menu mix-up on an airline - if this is the Shanghai menu I'm on the wrong plane!

Welcome Aboard
Welcome about Singapore Airlines. The crew were charming and delightful. However, they must have been a new crew, because ...

Random Menus
A new, keen, but clueless crew. I filled in a survey I was handed. I gave them top marks for friendliness, willingness and speed.

I read the menu, although I was having the special meal, to find out what I was missing.

After fifteen minutes perusing, I started trying to work out which direction are we flying? I always get half way through, then find I am reading tomorow's breakfast or my return flight's dinner.

Menu designers should produce menus printed one way up for each direction, with a different symbol or colour on the back or the front.  The crew can then ensure you are getting the menu for nearest meal, not a later meal.

I think I've seen that in magazines and menus on a cheap airline such as Ryan Air. I remember thinking, it can't be that expensive. If a cheap airline can afford the time to organise it, so can the more expensive airlines.

Then should I realised that Singapore Airlines had given me the menu for Shanghai. I was not going to Shanghai. Nor was anybody else on my flight.

Other people also received the wrong menu. Our flight attendant raced up and down trying to retrieve the wrong menus.

I tensed, waiting, warily, for the pilot to come on air and say, "We are en route to Shanghai, oops, sorry, Singapore. It's my first day on this route - in fact any route!"

I must save that story for one of my stand-up comedy turns, or a humorous speech. I feel a funny poem brewing.

When I am evaluating a speech and a speaker apologises because 'it is my first speech,' I tell them: "The audience does not want to hear it's your first speech. That revelation makes them sit on the edge of their chair worrying that you are going to burst into tears and run off stage in the middle.

"A speaker is piloting the audience, like the pilot on the plane. The people sitting in the seats do not want to hear. 'Hi, folks, it's my first time!' "

I think the airline staff gave out a random set of menus to everybody. Very pretty menu cover. I fancied the Shanghai menu, considered switching flights. Only joking.

Note to printers, add the name of the route on cover. No, that would cost them to print different covers for every flight.

No harm done.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.