TANKS Travel Tales - a travelogue.......

Low Cost Carrier....... With Low Cost Carriers (LCC) sprouting like mushrooms after a heavy tropical downpour, many are jumping on the air travel bandwagon. In a way, this is a good thing for those travellers who otherwise may not be able to afford to travel to far flung destinations due to the previously relatively prohibitive costs of air travel. A Scoot A320 plane on the tarmac of the Sultan Azlan Shah Airport, Ipoh, Malaysia (2017) But for those where cost is not such a big deterrent, is LCC the way to travel? As the name suggests, LCC basically means no-frills air travel. And because most LCCs operate on very tight schedule amidst other business-related constraints, this usually means that if there is a technical issue either with equipment (i.e airplanes) or operations such flight delays due to inclement weather, staff shift planning and other related issues, there will be downstream impact on the traveller such as prolonged delays at airports or even last-minute c

Scoot is a low-cost carrier which specialises in medium and long haul flights. Scoot is owned by Singapore Airlines and operates out of its home base at Singapore's Changi International Airport. While walking to one of the boarding gates at Changi Airport's Terminal 2 on 2 July 2016, I spotted this beautiful and brand new Boeing 787-8 painted in Scoot's full livery.  Boeing 787-8 from Scoot, Changi International Airport, Singapore (2016)

This was a hurried booking for an unplanned trip from Singapore to the city of Thiruvananthapuram in the state of Kerala, India in the month of April 2016. The trip resulted from an 11th hour decision to attend the wedding of a friend. The booking was done just a few days before the trip and I was lucky to still be able to get a seat for the flight. The only direct flight available from Singapore to Thiruvananthapuram was offered by SilkAir, the regional arm of Singapore Airlines. I have flew on SilkAir many times before on my trips around the South-East Asian region but this was by far my longest flight onboard a SilkAir flight.  Total flight time from Singapore's Changi International Airport (IATA: SIN, ICAO: WSSS) to Thiruvananthapuram's Trivandrum International Airport (IATA: TRV, ICAO: VOTV) is slightly over 4 hours. The route is usually serviced by either an Airbus A320-200 or A319-100 aircraft. As is common on all SilkAir flights, inflight service onboard Fl