With the aviation industry taking a heavy hit due to Covid-19, two Singaporeans have gone from flipping switches at the cockpit to flipping pancakes in a coffee shop at Ang Mo Kio.
Mr Steven Goh, 42, and Mr Ken Chew, 46, were captain and senior first officer respectively with Juneyao Air in China, flying domestic and international routes on the Airbus A320.
Mr Goh had been flying for 15 years but was forced to stop in early February as the coronavirus started sweeping across the world. Mr Chew, on the job for 25 years, was grounded a month later.
The two men were having a meal at 20 Ghim Moh Road Market and Food Centre when they chanced upon Granny's Pancake, a min jiang kueh stall run by 55-year-old Billy Ng that seems to have a perpetual queue.
They tried out the pancakes and found them to be "very special and different from other pancakes", and approached Ng to be their mentor. They also registered for the Hawker Development Programme, which includes taking classes about business planning and marketing.
The National Environment Agency and SkillsFuture Singapore launched the programme in January to help new hawkers enter the trade, providing them with training, apprenticeship and incubation. To date, about 150 participants have completed the training stage.
At the end of their classes and apprenticeship with Ng in September, the two moved to a coffee shop in Ang Mo Kio with a “simple set-up” to sell pancakes and they are currently experimenting with different flavours.
Speaking about their new line of work, Mr Chew said that it's a "totally different environment".
It's tough work as they have to mix vats of batter and stand behind hot cast iron pans every day, which is a far cry from sitting in the cockpit. Instead of viewing puffs of cloud, now they watch puffs of steam rise from their pans.
“Being a hawker, you need to have endurance – manning the stall, working without any rest or time to sit down,” Mr Goh said. “But whenever you get good feedback from customers, it spurs you on. That’s what is keeping me going.”
Mr Chew adds that they're ready to move to a hawker stall if they were offered one. The duo hopes to have more than one stall in the future and plan to hire employees to run the daily operations while they handle the business from behind the scenes.
That's not to say that the pair don't wish to return to the cockpit. Mr Chew hopes the aviation industry will recover "within a year or two" and that they'll be able to take to the skies once more.