Certain airlines are adjectives as much as companies. To describe a flight as "very
Singapore Airlines" is to say everything about its calm, care and quiet competence, and at the
2024 Travelling for Business Awards the carrier behind the phrase was named a Finalist for Best Long Haul Airline of the Year.
The airline's UK proposition is built on the London-Singapore trunk route, flown non-stop into Changi Airport, itself a perennial contender for the world's best, from where one of Asia-Pacific's great networks unfolds: Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and beyond, connected with a precision that makes even the longest itineraries feel composed. For British companies doing business across the region, the airline is less a supplier than a piece of infrastructure.
Its famous advantage is human. Crew selection and training run far beyond industry norms, producing service that anticipates rather than reacts, and the standard holds in every cabin, not just at the nose of the aircraft. Wide seats, considered lighting and acclaimed catering, including the option for premium passengers to pre-select restaurant-grade dishes before departure, help travellers land in Singapore or Sydney genuinely rested. The
KrisFlyer programme and Star Alliance membership fold the experience into a global loyalty framework, while consistent sweeps of the major international airline rankings through the period confirmed the product's freakish consistency.
The 2024 judges weighed all this against an exceptional field, Emirates ultimately prevailed, with British Airways and Virgin Atlantic alongside, and the finalist result said less about any shortfall than about the category's brutal standard. On service culture alone, most panels would call it a coronation-in-waiting.
The airline's discipline extends to how it grows. Rather than chasing every market, Singapore Airlines calibrates capacity to demand with an almost actuarial patience, which is why its punctuality, load factors and service scores hold steady where rivals' oscillate. Its low-cost subsidiary Scoot hoovers up price-sensitive regional traffic, leaving the mainline free to defend the premium standard, a two-brand architecture that protects exactly what business travellers pay the airline to protect.
The
Travelling for Business Awards return each year to ask which carriers business travellers actually trust with their hardest journeys, and Singapore Airlines' 2024 recognition confirmed its permanent place on that shortest of shortlists, with the top step never far from reach.
