Trip Reports - Phuket to Sweden, the long way...TG,SK,SQ,LH, part1

Well this is part of my award trip from Sweden to Asia and back, this is the return part from Thailand, which was made last weekend. As the main part was to go on SQ on the intercontinental part, as this was a *award trip, I could not use Silk Air from HKT to SIN, thus had to go TG first to BKK, between BKK and SIN there was quite a choice, well mainly TG & SQ, but there also was the little odd selection of the SAS flight arriving from CPH and continuing to Singapore, which I thought to give a try.


TG 630
HKT-BKK, on Thai Airways
Seat ; 14A
Airbus A-300

Check in at the domestic area at Phuket Airport, quite many people as there is 1 full Orient Thai Flight to Seoul, which makes check in area quite crowded.

Royal Orchid Check in is empty though, and the lady quickly arranges so my bag will be coded all the way to GOT, Sweden. As Thai also has the good concept for domestic/international transfers in BKK, this means also to pay the Thai Airport Departure tax prior to walking through to passport control, were there are quite some lines with people for the Seoul flights, apparently one with Phuket Air as well.. While waiting it is a bit enjoying to watch the thai border control , and how 1 of the passport control guys can check 3 persons, while another one makes 1 person :) . Finally through, I make it to the TG lounge, which is quite relaxing, as Phuket international departure lounge is not so very big when there are two 747s to depart.

Royal Orchid Lounge Phuket International
The Royal Orchid Lounge is quite big, and has big windows, there is a TV with some thai soap opera showing, a selection of Thai domestic & International papers. Food is limited to some sandwiches & fresh fruit. Drinks on offer is soft drinks and singha beer, as well as tea and coffee. No internet on offer unfortunately. Spending the time watching the runway, which is not very busy at this hour, noon, 1 Air Asia departure to BKK, along with the 2, 747s from Orient Thai , and Phuket Air which departs in a matter of minutes. Around 1220 my A300 from BKK arrives. Around 1245 they announce boarding, but the lounge staff tells me I can wait a bit, they will tell me when to go....which they do not, so finally I end up being called, and to be the last to board.

The cabin crew on this domestic leg seems a bit tired, a quick note on my boarding car directing me to 14A in the front part of the aircraft. Due to my late boarding no pre departure drink or hot towel... :( ...well this is a short flight, no big deal. Security video shown during push back, take off in the cloudy skies, so not much of a view. When seat belt sign goes off, cabin crew offers another hot towel. After that request to each passenger if they would like the meal, which is fish with noodles. business cabin quite fulled up with maybe 5 free seats. Quite soon they start handing out trays, with the hot food, as well as a small dessert. Drink selection seems a bit limited, drinks distributed on a small tray, with water, ice tea and OJ. As well as coffee and tea. Food tastes good, and I must say I´m quite impressed for this to be a short domestic flight with flying time of a little more then 1 hour...

Arriving in BKK, we get a bus gate, mostly due to all different arrengements, as this flights continues to HKG, there is several passengers to go sameflight, also there are several domestic passengers, and finally quite a lot of international transfer passengers, all to be collected by different buses.
Bus drops us of at lower level of international transfer & arrivals. So I take a walk around to find my way to upper departure level. As I have about 2 hours for my next flight, I take a walk around the busy international departure area.

BKK Lounges
There are for sure a lot of different lounge options if you are a star gold in BKK. I try one of the smaller TG lounges, but the lady tells me the lounge near gates 30...is bigger and better, and also closer to my Singapore flight, well i´d been to the new TG lounge, and also read a lot about it here on FT, so well off to the larger Royal Orchid & *G lounge. Which indeed is very nice, and a large selection off food and drinks. Only thing which could be nicer, would be some airside view, as well as better internet options, one computer available this afternoon.

Well time flies, and soon it is time to go to gate (think it was 31 or 33), quick security check, and boarding, one boarding line for star gold & business class passengers.

SK973
BKK-SIN , Scandinavian Airlines
Seat 9A
Airbus A340-300

Well I must say it felt a little odd to board an SK flight after a few weeks in Asia, and not be heading directly home, good part was lots of swedish papers available as flight was just arriving from Copenhagen. And always nice with some scandinavian cabin crew, but honestly not so impressed as most of the asian airlines I´d used prior to this trip (NH,TG & SQ) offer much better service. Pilots on SK are usually though very nice and talkative, 2 norwegians upfront welcoming us aboard, all cabin crew & flight deck crew new on at BKK.

Flight was note very full, most passengers vere in economy, and I guess most of them was on theiur way from Copenhagen, I had a seat in the rear part of business class which is only 2 rows, and behind is economy extra, were there were only 2 people sitting. In C we were only 2 persons in the rear section, me & one other person boarding at BKK. In front section there were a few business travellers. Crew was not very attentive, but finally came around with OJ and Water as predeparture drink in a plastic glass.

Not much more happening, due to heavy traffic we had to wait a while before takeoff, good thing with SK is the departure cams, always enjoying.

Once airborne we were given a hot towel, and then some drinks before dinner, food on offer was sort of the european c class meal, hot item, on top of a salad. Which was a little dissapointment, no menus, and two only "hot items" to choose from, fish or pork. The good side though the food was served on the larger intercontinental trays with the nice glasses and porcelain. The drink offers vere also a bit dissapointing, small bottles of wine, and actually no additional drink offer after the hot meal being served

So actually no more service after tray was taken away, as I did fly TG , BKK-KUL just the week before, and this route is quite similar, 2 hours. TG has way much better service. Even so the service on these routes are a total different world compared to a 2 hour flight in europe...

Arrival into SIN on schedule, arriving in Terminal 1, due to some error with the docking system, aircraft stopped a little early for the airbridge to connect. Which meant we had to wait a push back truck to pull us the last meter to the correct stop. This took a while, and all passengers has directly after we came to a stop walked up towards the exit...so pilot had to ask everyone to return to their seats.

Upon entering Changi Airport, there were some additional security check , meaning we had to do another screening, before being allowed to enter the transit area. I must say I really like Changi Airport , so calm and effective. Nice selection of shops, so after a bit of shopping, off to SilverKris Lounge...

SilverKris Lounge Changi
The lounge is quite well filled up this saturday evening, with english premier league fotball on TV in the bar, which gathers a lot of people, find myself a seat and walk over to the bar to get a singapore sling, must say he made it really good.

A lot of nice food on offer, specially the dumplings were really good.
And a lot of drinks to offer, I find the lounge really nice, but a bit dark due to lack of windows, you fell a bit cut of from the airport environment, on good and bad. I must say the have really good working stations with great internet access, and comfortable chairs.

Well after a few hours of eating and drinking it starts to get time to walk towards my SQ26 flight to Frankfurt. More to come...

Bring it on. :cool:

Nice reading so far. What you say about destination rather than flying time, as the deciding factor on service, sure is true.

...off to departure gate, for SQ26 to Frankfurt and further on to New York.

Security check is quick, and after that a second passport check, security seems tight in Singapore. A few minutes wait in the departure lounge before boarding starts for , First, Raffles and Star Golds.

SQ 26
SIN-FRA, Singapore Airlines (Star Alliance painted)
Boeing 747-400

Boarding through the first airbridge then, and through lower part of Raffles Class, up to the nice upper deck. As I understood this flight was completely full, don´t know about F though. Friendly crew shows me to my seat, and assists with putting some stuff in the overhead compartments. Good thing with upper deck on the 747s is the storage bins on the floor as well.

Predeparture drinks offered, this time for sure I opt for the champagne, (piper heidsieck rare cuvée réservée), hot towel offered as well. Pilot on the speakers, telling us due to heavy outbound traffic around midnight, and limits over malaysian airspace we are probably facing a delay before take off. He also tells us they are a total of 4...in the cockpit today, !?!, I guess due to some trainiing, and it might have something to do with the continuation of the flight to New York. After about 40 minutes we are finally pushed back, take off aorund 0100, 1 hour late, pilots let us know that probably we will be able to rgain most time so arrival in Frankfurt around 0600 on Sunday morning local time.
Prior to take off, the cabin crew as well takes upp orders for the supper, as well as after take off drinks. Shortly after seat belt sign is off, serving of the pre ordered drinks start, after getting taste to the singapore slings, why not another one on higher altitude.

Thought I´d check through the Krisworld a little, and then I notice one of this flights few problems...there is some problem with the sound, every second minute or so, there goes on some kind of PA, passenger announcement, which interups kriswolrd for a few seconds...which makes watching movies or whatever a bit annoying, mostly due to sound goes away for a few seconds. The movies on offer are othervise really impressive, with among a few; Collateral, Spiderman 2, The Terminal, I-robot and a few other blockbusters, as well as a large amount of other movies, really impressed by this selection. But as I tried to watch I-robot, I became frustrated, it is quite annoying to watch a movie and miss half the sentences the actors say..., cabin crew got alerted by several passengers about this, and later on in the flight they announce they would shut down and restart Krisworld which would take between 20 and 30 minutes. Even so, problem continued.. :( . Resulted in I half watched a chinese movie which had english text, then not such a big deal sounds goes away sometimes, and then fast forwarded spider-man 2, only watching the highlights, was not very impressed by what I saw. !

Well between Krisworld problem got served the supper, starter was;

-Smoked salmon "sakura" wiith yam noodles and mesclun (miso dresssing)

Main Event; of which I choosed the chilean bass filet.

-Roasted chilean bass fillet in a New England claim choweder sauce with bacon and spinach.
-Chicken in paprika gravy with roasted vegetables and potatoes.
-Stirfried sliced beef in Oriental black pepper sauce with seasonal vegetables and steamed rice.

After this a offer from the cheese board, as well as the "seet note" with some fresh fruit.

The Wines on offer;
White Wines;
-Hattenheimer riesling kabinett 2001 balthasar ress.
-Chablis champs royaux 2000

Red Wines;
-Chateau beau-site 1999 saint estephe
-Barbera d'asti superiore "la luna e i falo" 2000 terre da vino

Port Wine;
Taylor's late bottled vintage 1998 port.

Overall everything offered quite quickly as most people wanted to go to sleep, which also was the best option after dinner was finished, due to Kris World technical problems.

I was very satisfied with seat 11A, in the front row, very easy to walk by the neighbour so it felt very spacious. Only thing that I know has been mentioned here to be the bad part is that it is close to lavatories, mostly due to light passing the curtain when people pass in and out, but an eye shade covers that problems. So really did not bother me. The space bed was comfortable, and I managed to sleep a few hours.
Waking up somewhere over Caspian Sea. The flight routing was over the malaysian coastand over southwestern coast of Thailand (think almost above Phuket), over Bay of Bengal, and over central India, Northern Pakistan (close to Lahore), I guess over Northern Afghanistan as well, over Turkmenistan, and over Caucasus. over central Ukraine and into Poland for descent into FRA.

Abut 2½ hours before arrival , lights was dimmed up and they started preparing for breakfast. Starting with serving of fresh juice or water, the orange juice is really nice.
Trays are distributed, and first offer is breads from "the bakery", along with offer of cereal or yoghurt. Order for the main meal, taken by same time.

The offer is;
-Singapore carrot cake.
-Grilled beef fillet and veal sausage with roma tomato, mushrooms and Lyonaise potatoes.
-Breakfast frittata with vegetalbes, chicken sausage, roasted tomato and sauteed mushrooms.

I did pick the grilled beef fillet, which was nice, quite a large breakfast I would say. Offer of tea & coffee and juice and water.

After trays are cleared we have about 1½ hour before arrival into FRA, did decide to ask fot one of SQs hot favorites (gourmet coffees), however it seems the first attendant forgot about my request, after 15 minutes I thought better use the call button to get some attention. So I got my Kenya AA "kilimanjaro" coffee, which was quite tasteful, but not that special.!?
Shortly after that we start preparing for landing, and takes ground in Frankfurt around 0600 in the morning.

Frankfurt Airport & crowded senator lounge B-gates
Arrival gates is in the far remote areas of C-gates (C28 I think?)...closer to T2 in FRA. Having a transfer in T1 I start walking, the looong way, half way I reach the red carpet club, which is actually after the extra security check for this flight as it continues to New York. All transfer passengers has to leave the plane, and were told to be back at around 0730. And raffles & first class passengers were informed Red Carpet Club would be their lounge to use.

As I had a intra shengen transfer, I thought I culd as well walk along to the LH senator lounge, as the red carpet club seemed to become pretty filled up.
Well, walking on what seems like a few kilometres...it is really a far distance to walk. Finally arrive in the B concourse, which is a total zoo this sunday morning, people everywere. And well I had thoughts of getting a shower and realxing a bit in the senator lounge. I should of course have known better...LH lounges are usually not very relaxing :rolleyes: . Que for showers ( I think there are 2 in this lounge) are about 15 persons.., as I only have a short flight back home not much to bother, but not very funny if you have a working day or a long continuing journey to make.

So, thought to get a comfortable seat then maybe in the lounge, not a chance...all seats taken, finally find a free chair by the tables close to the lounge entry. At least there is quite a good selection of newspapers to read through, as well as decent choices of breakfast.

As I´m sitting close to the lounge reception, I can hear a discussin between the lounge attendants and 2 first class passengers with SQ to USA, and they told her they are quite upset with the poor lounge offers in Frankfurt. She told the soon LH would offer another lounge for F passengers, I guess the same as discussed in LH forum regarding LHs new premium card to be released as well ?!.

Well finally after hanging around the crowded lounge for about 1 hour, I take a walk thrugh passport control for the Schengen B Gates, and boarding and of course a bus to the plane.

FRA-GOT
LH3040, Lufthansa
Seat 3A
Boeing 737-500

Well not very much to write home about this flight, not a very friendly cabin crew after having been on SQ, I heard some other people in C on this flight whi had been in Y on SQ26 from Singapore, and they pretty much told each other the seats and service in SQ Y, was better than LH , intra european businss class. I can't say as I've yet to try SQ in economy. But the quite old cabin attendant in c this morning seemed not in the best mood, think she would have preferred to stay in bed this cold but sunny sunday morning.

LH standard pre takeoff offers of magazines and a towellete. Food service is not bad, but not much more either, a few cold items, and some bread. However no more fresh bread, only cold bread on offer. Well for a 1½ hour flight I did not expect anything this morning than to come home after all flights the last day. Pilot announcemnet was in a better mood, and they told us a bit about the flight, and noticed that "as alaways" they will make a Lufthansa scheduled flight, meaning we would arrive on time in GOT. Which we also did.

Final part to see if my bag made it all the way, and it finally did, but the bag was off among the later ones, no use of *A priority tag in GOT this morning for sure...even though the TG lady in HKT actually I think put 3 red tags on my bag :rolleyes: .

All in all, I had a really enjoyable journey, and as this was one of my first SQ flights, and I was soo impressed, I´ll try write a report about my flight from Sweden to Shanghai, with SQ which was in October, and those flights were even better then SQ26 experience.

Hope to be able to visit Asia soon again.

Great report, thanks! ^

A nice and interesting report, I have to try SQ in Raffles in the future. I took SQ 26 (but only in Economy) on the 15th October on the segment to JFK and out of SIN ten days later (25th October). Our gate was C 13 and yes it is quite a distance to walk to the Terminal 1 B out of 1 C, especially from this gate, which is - if I remember correctly - in fact in the new Terminal, but only could reached from Terminal 1.

As FTL is could not use the RCC, but I was told, that queue for the showers in the FTL lounge (they have more than 2) is the most time as long as in the SEN Lounge, but you will get your shower faster, as there are more than only two. I had on the 26th in the morning app. 15 person queuing in front of me and it was my turn after app. 50 minutes, which is the normal time in this time of the day at this lounge.

The lounge itself was crowded too.

Jan

Enjoyed reading every moement of it, SQ is the best and everyone knows it. And I understand what you mean about the service on LH, I did the intra EUR from MUC to Budapest, the FA's looked dis-interested but what can you do but smile and greet them to cheer(wake) them up. ^

Thanks for the report! That's a routing I wouldn't mind doing someday. ^ ^

Thanks for an excellent report!

It was sad to see SK cut back so much on the BKK-SIN segment. I flew it like almost one year ago (maybe 1 and 1/2), but there was full menu service (indeed separate menu card for BKK-SIN) and a hot entree is provided. I personally hate that salad idea with a hot accompaniment on top... I even hate it when I flew CPH-LHR... not to mention how awful that pork chop looked like. BA at least serves a more substantial salad with more substantial toppings.

Anyway, SQ sounded fine...

Thanks for the wonderful report!

carfield

It was sad to see SK cut back so much on the BKK-SIN segment. I flew it like almost one year ago (maybe 1 and 1/2), but there was full menu service (indeed separate menu card for BKK-SIN) and a hot entree is provided. I personally hate that salad idea with a hot accompaniment on top... I even hate it when I flew CPH-LHR... not to mention how awful that pork chop looked like. BA at least serves a more substantial salad with more substantial toppings.

Anyway, SQ sounded fine...

carfield

Yupp, SK is unfortunately at least per in flight service declining quite fast, and for BKK-SIN routing I'd definitively pick SQ or TG instead, even though I like the A340 SK uses. By the way inflight entertainment also was cut back, only a few programs available on this leg...strange but a fact. !?

SQ Raffles..well, I have yet not experienced any better way to fly...

Thanks for all nice feedback,
/Marcus

SQ Raffles..well, I have yet not experienced any better way to fly...



Same here...but in two days I will be taking my first flight in F on SQ (using points) so I expect that to top it! (Report to come)

This sounds an enjoyable trip. Less enjoyable must be the charter flights operated over a comparable route, all year, by Finnair, operating Helsinki - Ahmedabad (India) (stop for fuel) - Phuket with a 28" legroom charter-configured Boeing 757 ! Finnair also use these on marathon charters to resorts in Brazil, refuelling in the Canary Islands. Both sets of flights operate almost daily in season.

A compensation of course is that it's a direct flight, a considerable offset to the 4 sector trip described.

Very nice report!!!
Sounds like a fun trip to do, and Southeast Asia is always nice.
Four airlines during one journey is quite impressive as well...:)

What did they say at the Eurobonus member service when you wanted to fly Phuket-Gothenburg as HKT-BKK-SIN-FRA-GOT?
Are they starting to get used to people wanting to do the most awkward routings nowadays?
The easiest would of course have been HKT-BKK-ARN/CPH-GOT, but that's no fun...

Very nice report!!!
Sounds like a fun trip to do, and Southeast Asia is always nice.
Four airlines during one journey is quite impressive as well...:)

What did they say at the Eurobonus member service when you wanted to fly Phuket-Gothenburg as HKT-BKK-SIN-FRA-GOT?
Are they starting to get used to people wanting to do the most awkward routings nowadays?
The easiest would of course have been HKT-BKK-ARN/CPH-GOT, but that's no fun...

hehe..well...you have a good point, actually not much arguing by Eurobonus people in Sweden, must say the SAS sales staff are still really professional and always doing their best to help , no questions asked. For sure HKT-BKK-ARN-GOT would have been a bit quicker maybe...but not at all that fun.

SQ is just sooo nice to fly with...however, Fliar,...looking forward to your F report....I´d love to hear every detail..can only bet SQ first..to be, well, don't know but dam, it must be sooooo good..;-)...