SINGAPORE wants to create a knowledge economy and that's a wonderful thing. There's much more money to be made using one's brains over one's brawn. And being fully informed is part of the process -- even hooking up to the information drip in the air.

So it's not surprising to hear that Singapore Airlines has launched its $170 million Internet-in-the-air platform. What is surprising is that it's taken so long, five years after the Internet entered the mainstream. And SIA is an airline that prides itself on being a trendsetter.

We who are fortunate to live in Singapore were treated at the weekend to what seemed a world first: a front-page article in the Straits Times filed from 35,000 feet, somewhere above the South China Sea. It was amazing stuff: the ability to file from a laptop in seat 35H, that is, rather than the content of the article itself.

This is a huge advance for those of us who spend too much time on planes, particularly the bizoids who run the world economy. Prior to in-flight Internet access, the advantage of flying business class was a better standard of movie and a better vintage of red, for which you paid four times the fare of cattle class. Now there's another reason to justify your biz-class perks -- amid a looming recession -- when you really should be back behind the curtain. You can work and communicate onboard in real time. SIA says it will extend the service, provided by Seattle-based Tenzing Communications, across all classes and Boeing members of its fleet.

But what the Straits Times article didn't say is where SIA was introducing the service. The flight was SQ30 from Singapore to Taipei and then on to Los Angeles. The route is a profitable one. Or rather was. If the routing rings a bell, that's because it used to be known as SQ006, the tragic flight that crashed into a crane in driving rain last October in Taipei -- the first crash under the SIA livery. The flight code was rebadged -- for SQ006 is burned forever in the national mindset -- but load factors are apparently still well off what they were.

Interestingly, this detail wasn't mentioned in the groundbreaking article -- so much for the knowledge economy -- and SIA spokesperson Innes Willox insisted it was a test run and not a cute way to get the proverbial but reluctant bums back on seats to Taipei, and then to LA. "This flight was chosen for various reasons, logistics and marketing," says Willox. He insists it was a coincidence the Net-in-the-air service was introduced on the same routing where SIA lost a plane, and 82 lives, in Taipei.

Of course, there's nothing particularly bad about SIA's initiative, or being economical with the facts. And the knowledge gap here rests more with the local paper, which tends to the editorial policy that only good news is good news. Singaporeans are used to gaps in their media.

But a knowledge economy brings with it special demands and responsibilities, like the corporate governance and transparency campaign underway in Singapore. The successful execution of it requires that all details be addressed and dealt with, even little ones like this "detail."