TG 410 SIN-BKK C
Oct 5, 2003, 4:08 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Terra Australis Cognita
Posts: 5,350
TG 410 SIN-BKK C
Trip report: 21 Sep 2003, TG 410 SIN-BKK C 777-300
Preface:
I've flown SIN-BKK-SIN 6 times during the last 2 months. The two big
carriers on this very popular route are, unsurprisingly, Singapore
Airlines (SQ) and Thai (TG), each of which flies half a dozen 747's,
777's and A320's back and forth every day. However, TG is always the
cheaper of the two, by as much as 50% if buying tickets ex-SIN, so
the rule of thumb is that TG is always full and SQ usually isn't.
(The cheapest option is actually hopping on the SIN-BKK leg of
onward flights by SK, AY, LH and the like, but these tend to
leave at inconvinient times and only once per day per airline.)
So, if you want to go about getting bumped, you'll want to book
your tickets early on TG for a very popular time (say, Friday or
Sunday evening) and then show up at the last minute... and
can you guess what this is leading up to?
The report:
I leave home a little over an hour before flight departure and get
to Changi Terminal 1 around 40 min before; kids, don't try this in
BKK! No hassle at check-in (Changi's deadline for most flights is
30 min and I've on occasion squeaked in later than that), the clerk
hands me my boarding pass and says "mumble mumble got you a seat
mumble mumble have a nice flight", I thank her perfunctorily and head
towards Immigration, glancing at my ticket as I walk.
But wait -- seat 15D -- isn't that awfully up front? What's this
funny blue stripe on the ticket and (only now does it hit me) does
that really say "class C"? OMG! I've been upgraded! It's been *ages*
since I last flew in C, since the company doesn't pay C for business
and I'm too cheap to pay C for leisure. The last time I tried to
upgrade on points, the aviation gods wouldn't let me fly C... and
bumped me up to F instead!
"Final Call" has been blinking ever since I arrived at the airport,
but there's mile-long queue out the gate as a packed 777's worth
of passengers queue for the single carry-on X-ray (thanks Osama).
But it moves with Singaporean efficiency, even if my underwater
camera's lead counterweight does ring the usual alarm bells, and soon
enough I can choose the first door in the connecting tube (whee!) and
enter the hallowed domain of C.
The seat is indeed big, although being 192 cm tall I'm slightly
disappointed to realize that I can still touch the seat in front
with my feet and the space under it is mostly taken up by IFE gear.
But it's wide enough to feel more like a sofa than an airline seat, and
the wide armrests conceal a slew of control buttons and IFE controllers;
I have to ask a FA how to turn on the reading light. The bewildered
Thai girl next to me, evidently a similar bumpee, has the same problem
and I help her out, getting a brilliant and all too rare authentic Thai
smile as a reward.
Service is one of the reasons I (slightly) prefer SQ over TG: it's
not that TG doesn't try, but eg. the staff's English is usually
marginal and in-flight announcements comical at best. TG also
seems to place more senior FAs in C/F and leave the cute young
things to bumble in Y, which would usually be a good thing, but
in TG's case doesn't help to improve that English ability one bit.
But in normal situations everybody's using the same script and
things work fine. The steward goes around passing hot towels, OJ,
white wine and water, the same service as Y (eat your heart out, flyers
of non-Asian airlines) but with real glasses instead of plastic.
Next on the menu is, well, the menu:
Chicken Pomelo Salad
Prawns with Tomato Basil Sauce, Buttered Egg Noodles
Grilled Tomato, French Beans
or
Chicken Curry "Mussaman", Steamed Thai Jasmine Rice
(Chicken Cooked in Coconut-Chilli Paste, Peanuts, Potato, Onion)
or
Braised Pork with Soya Sauce, Fried Rice, Mixed Vegetables
Assorted Breads, Biscuits, Butter, Cheese
Sticky Rice with Taro Paste
Tea, Coffee, Espresso, Cappuccino
Champagne:
Charles Lafitte
Red:
Chateau Val Joanis 2001
Chateau Saint Paul 1999
White:
Pascal Jolivet Sancerre Blanc 2001
Tokay Pinot Gris Vin D'Alsace 2001
The flight leaves on time and meal service starts as soon as the
seatbelt sign is off. A fabric tablecloth, a pack of metal utensils
(containing no less than three knives at that!) and a plastic tray
(boo) containing the appetizer and sundry side dishes appears. The
chicken pomelo salad is nothing short of excellent, it actually
tastes Thai (if a little tuned down) and is the best thing I've eaten
on an airplane in a long time. The white wine (I chose the Tokay
Pinot Gris) is quite decent, garlic bread and fresh rolls are passed
around, and despite having to battle with getting the plastic-wrapped
cheese (boo) open I'm just about to get into the mood...
...when the turbulence starts. It's monsoon season in Thailand
and the flights have been pretty choppy lately. Nothing too
horrible, nobody getting airsick within audible range, but enough
to keep the seatbelt sign boinging on and off and interrupt the
meal service for the next half hour.
Eventually things quiet down a bit (with the occasional bump
just to keep us on our toes), the appetizers are collected
and the mains are passed out. I had chosen the prawns with noodles
earlier, but only now do I realize that combining this with
turbulence and a white dress shirt was maybe not such a good idea.
Surprisingly, I manage to get it down without accrueing extra laundry
bills, but tastewise it's a bit of a disappointment; what with greasy
pasta, soggy string beans and generic tomato sauce, if not for the
big prawns, it could well be an economy-class meal. Maybe someday
I'll finally learn that pasta is never good on an airplane...
But TG makes up with its dessert cart. Only one choice, sticky
rice cakes with taro, but it goes down a treat with a glass of
Cockburn's port, listed on the menu but hurriedly fetched from F
by the ingratiatingly smiley steward, who also managed to mishear
"port wine" as "white wine" (!) the first time around. Dishes are
cleared out satisfyingly rapidly, but the turbulent 3-course meal
had taken its time. By the time I finally get out my laptop and
noise-cancelling headphones, the 2-hour trip is nearing its end
and the plane is already starting its descent. I listen to
Thai pop with one ear (no match for SQ's usual Ministry of Sound
club mixes on channel 3!), and squeeze in a few e-mails before
touchdown, with no time to try out the rest of the IFE system.
I only notice how quiet the front of the plane is when I turn
on the noise-cancelling: the engine noise completely disappears,
instead of just becoming quiet. (Changing the batteries just
before this flight probably didn't hurt either.)
At the exit smiley stewardesses are passing out Thai-style
flower garlands (for hanging on shrines and statues, not
around your neck) to all passing F/C women, instead of the
usual orchids; I later regret not grabbing one, since I make
a point of bringing one home from each trip to Thailand, but
mai pen rai. As TG is wont to do, our flight lands in Terminal 2
but Immigration and baggage claim are in T1, and Immigration
won't let you in from T2 even if you have no baggage...!
Not a big hassle, as the terminals are practically merged
together anyway and there's virtually no line at T1, but it's still
stupid to have to walk a few hundred completely pointless extra
meters. Am I the only one eagerly waiting for Suvarnabhumi to
finally open, and more than a little sceptical that it'll make
even the already-delayed 2005 opening date?
Bangkok is swelteringly hot even at 9 PM and the usual night-time
taxi queue is rapidly forming, with touts doing their best to
hawk their quick-quick limousine rides. No matter, in 5 minutes
I get a female cabbie (!) who actually speaks English (!!) and
drives sanely (!!!); I pick up a bag from my previous hotel, head
over to the new one, and reward her with a 50-baht tip.
Conclusion:
Not bad for a freebie, but I would've been disappointed if I
had had to pay my own money (or even points) for it. Then
again, it's pretty much pointless to fly short hops on C
anyway, especially on an airline like TG where Y is quite
tolerable as is.
Preface:
I've flown SIN-BKK-SIN 6 times during the last 2 months. The two big
carriers on this very popular route are, unsurprisingly, Singapore
Airlines (SQ) and Thai (TG), each of which flies half a dozen 747's,
777's and A320's back and forth every day. However, TG is always the
cheaper of the two, by as much as 50% if buying tickets ex-SIN, so
the rule of thumb is that TG is always full and SQ usually isn't.
(The cheapest option is actually hopping on the SIN-BKK leg of
onward flights by SK, AY, LH and the like, but these tend to
leave at inconvinient times and only once per day per airline.)
So, if you want to go about getting bumped, you'll want to book
your tickets early on TG for a very popular time (say, Friday or
Sunday evening) and then show up at the last minute... and
can you guess what this is leading up to?
The report:
I leave home a little over an hour before flight departure and get
to Changi Terminal 1 around 40 min before; kids, don't try this in
BKK! No hassle at check-in (Changi's deadline for most flights is
30 min and I've on occasion squeaked in later than that), the clerk
hands me my boarding pass and says "mumble mumble got you a seat
mumble mumble have a nice flight", I thank her perfunctorily and head
towards Immigration, glancing at my ticket as I walk.
But wait -- seat 15D -- isn't that awfully up front? What's this
funny blue stripe on the ticket and (only now does it hit me) does
that really say "class C"? OMG! I've been upgraded! It's been *ages*
since I last flew in C, since the company doesn't pay C for business
and I'm too cheap to pay C for leisure. The last time I tried to
upgrade on points, the aviation gods wouldn't let me fly C... and
bumped me up to F instead!
"Final Call" has been blinking ever since I arrived at the airport,
but there's mile-long queue out the gate as a packed 777's worth
of passengers queue for the single carry-on X-ray (thanks Osama).
But it moves with Singaporean efficiency, even if my underwater
camera's lead counterweight does ring the usual alarm bells, and soon
enough I can choose the first door in the connecting tube (whee!) and
enter the hallowed domain of C.
The seat is indeed big, although being 192 cm tall I'm slightly
disappointed to realize that I can still touch the seat in front
with my feet and the space under it is mostly taken up by IFE gear.
But it's wide enough to feel more like a sofa than an airline seat, and
the wide armrests conceal a slew of control buttons and IFE controllers;
I have to ask a FA how to turn on the reading light. The bewildered
Thai girl next to me, evidently a similar bumpee, has the same problem
and I help her out, getting a brilliant and all too rare authentic Thai
smile as a reward.
Service is one of the reasons I (slightly) prefer SQ over TG: it's
not that TG doesn't try, but eg. the staff's English is usually
marginal and in-flight announcements comical at best. TG also
seems to place more senior FAs in C/F and leave the cute young
things to bumble in Y, which would usually be a good thing, but
in TG's case doesn't help to improve that English ability one bit.
But in normal situations everybody's using the same script and
things work fine. The steward goes around passing hot towels, OJ,
white wine and water, the same service as Y (eat your heart out, flyers
of non-Asian airlines) but with real glasses instead of plastic.
Next on the menu is, well, the menu:
Chicken Pomelo Salad
Prawns with Tomato Basil Sauce, Buttered Egg Noodles
Grilled Tomato, French Beans
or
Chicken Curry "Mussaman", Steamed Thai Jasmine Rice
(Chicken Cooked in Coconut-Chilli Paste, Peanuts, Potato, Onion)
or
Braised Pork with Soya Sauce, Fried Rice, Mixed Vegetables
Assorted Breads, Biscuits, Butter, Cheese
Sticky Rice with Taro Paste
Tea, Coffee, Espresso, Cappuccino
Champagne:
Charles Lafitte
Red:
Chateau Val Joanis 2001
Chateau Saint Paul 1999
White:
Pascal Jolivet Sancerre Blanc 2001
Tokay Pinot Gris Vin D'Alsace 2001
The flight leaves on time and meal service starts as soon as the
seatbelt sign is off. A fabric tablecloth, a pack of metal utensils
(containing no less than three knives at that!) and a plastic tray
(boo) containing the appetizer and sundry side dishes appears. The
chicken pomelo salad is nothing short of excellent, it actually
tastes Thai (if a little tuned down) and is the best thing I've eaten
on an airplane in a long time. The white wine (I chose the Tokay
Pinot Gris) is quite decent, garlic bread and fresh rolls are passed
around, and despite having to battle with getting the plastic-wrapped
cheese (boo) open I'm just about to get into the mood...
...when the turbulence starts. It's monsoon season in Thailand
and the flights have been pretty choppy lately. Nothing too
horrible, nobody getting airsick within audible range, but enough
to keep the seatbelt sign boinging on and off and interrupt the
meal service for the next half hour.
Eventually things quiet down a bit (with the occasional bump
just to keep us on our toes), the appetizers are collected
and the mains are passed out. I had chosen the prawns with noodles
earlier, but only now do I realize that combining this with
turbulence and a white dress shirt was maybe not such a good idea.
Surprisingly, I manage to get it down without accrueing extra laundry
bills, but tastewise it's a bit of a disappointment; what with greasy
pasta, soggy string beans and generic tomato sauce, if not for the
big prawns, it could well be an economy-class meal. Maybe someday
I'll finally learn that pasta is never good on an airplane...
But TG makes up with its dessert cart. Only one choice, sticky
rice cakes with taro, but it goes down a treat with a glass of
Cockburn's port, listed on the menu but hurriedly fetched from F
by the ingratiatingly smiley steward, who also managed to mishear
"port wine" as "white wine" (!) the first time around. Dishes are
cleared out satisfyingly rapidly, but the turbulent 3-course meal
had taken its time. By the time I finally get out my laptop and
noise-cancelling headphones, the 2-hour trip is nearing its end
and the plane is already starting its descent. I listen to
Thai pop with one ear (no match for SQ's usual Ministry of Sound
club mixes on channel 3!), and squeeze in a few e-mails before
touchdown, with no time to try out the rest of the IFE system.
I only notice how quiet the front of the plane is when I turn
on the noise-cancelling: the engine noise completely disappears,
instead of just becoming quiet. (Changing the batteries just
before this flight probably didn't hurt either.)
At the exit smiley stewardesses are passing out Thai-style
flower garlands (for hanging on shrines and statues, not
around your neck) to all passing F/C women, instead of the
usual orchids; I later regret not grabbing one, since I make
a point of bringing one home from each trip to Thailand, but
mai pen rai. As TG is wont to do, our flight lands in Terminal 2
but Immigration and baggage claim are in T1, and Immigration
won't let you in from T2 even if you have no baggage...!
Not a big hassle, as the terminals are practically merged
together anyway and there's virtually no line at T1, but it's still
stupid to have to walk a few hundred completely pointless extra
meters. Am I the only one eagerly waiting for Suvarnabhumi to
finally open, and more than a little sceptical that it'll make
even the already-delayed 2005 opening date?
Bangkok is swelteringly hot even at 9 PM and the usual night-time
taxi queue is rapidly forming, with touts doing their best to
hawk their quick-quick limousine rides. No matter, in 5 minutes
I get a female cabbie (!) who actually speaks English (!!) and
drives sanely (!!!); I pick up a bag from my previous hotel, head
over to the new one, and reward her with a 50-baht tip.
Conclusion:
Not bad for a freebie, but I would've been disappointed if I
had had to pay my own money (or even points) for it. Then
again, it's pretty much pointless to fly short hops on C
anyway, especially on an airline like TG where Y is quite
tolerable as is.
Oct 5, 2003, 11:27 pm
#2
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: either on a trans-Pac, or on an Amtrak
Programs: Amtrak (AGR) Select, AA Plat, DL Gold, Shangri-La Golden Circle Jade, HHonors Silver, BonVoy Gold
Posts: 67
Excellent report. I had fun reading it.
Your flight very closely mirrors my SIN-BKK trip in C on TG 402 back in June: "comical" in-flight announcements, a rather underwhelming entree, and turbulence at precisely the wrong time. Not surprised that things haven't changed much down SIN-BKK way...
Your flight very closely mirrors my SIN-BKK trip in C on TG 402 back in June: "comical" in-flight announcements, a rather underwhelming entree, and turbulence at precisely the wrong time. Not surprised that things haven't changed much down SIN-BKK way...
Oct 7, 2003, 9:06 am
#3
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: london uk
Programs: BA Gold
Posts: 1,046
Hmm but what's TG like long haul? I have to choose between LX and TG for an upcoming flight from ZRH. Which would you choose if no price difference existed?
%-)
------------------
There's old pilots & there's bold pilots but there's not many old bold ...
%-)
------------------
There's old pilots & there's bold pilots but there's not many old bold ...
Oct 7, 2003, 10:18 am
#4
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: SFO/ATL/MEL/BKK
Programs: Marriott Plat, Hilton Diamond, IHG Diamond, Hyatt Globalist UA 1K MM, Delta Diamond
Posts: 2,678
TG longhaul in C anf F seats is nothing to write home about in my opinion, I prefer UA, yet service... That is another story...