LondonFlyer123

Hello,

I am looking at the least-stress option for flying my family between London and Singapore. I personally can sleep anywhere/anytime and can survive on very little sleep without getting stressed.

Unfortunately, my wife is the opposite in the extreme. I have a very active 4 year old son and a 6 month old daughter.

I was looking at Singpoare Air's suites in first class as one option. At around £22k return, I think I can get us all into what is effectively a private "cocoon", albeit with an open ceiling.

The cost is a big uplift from business obviously, but I'd love to hear what people think and of equivalent options - I believe Emirates has something similar.

Alternatively, if anyone can recommend another way of travelling with their families for 12+ hours, I'd love to hear it. I am concerned about upsetting other passengers in business if my children start playing up, which for this length of time, is quite likely.

Thanks in advance.

uk1

Welcome on your first post ....^

I'm not going to help you choose which line just make two observations which I hope would help you with your decisions.

Firstly I wouldn't base your choice of class on a fear of upsetting others. To be honest, I don't think upsetting F passengers is better than upsetting C passengers. Just choose the best solution for you.

Many of the C class beds/seats of some lines is as good or even better than F in others. So look at the piccies. We travel with BA in F several times a year and find it adequate.

Also although on many of the flights many of your fellow passengers will not be seeing Singapore as their final destination but instead passing through to Oz for example, in your case it's different. You might find that this might make it better for you not to sleep much or at most a little on the outward leg to Singapore whereas everyone else around you may need to sleep. On the return you will be sleeping. You might want to keep your kids up for much of the outward leg or have a few very dire days in Singapore whilst your kid's body clocks adjusts over the first few days. The baby will sleep a lot but your 4 year old might suffer if you allow to much sleep on the flight and so they will get quite grumpy if you let them sleep on the flight and feel very wide awake for their first night in Singapore and then want to sleep on the first day.

If you are going for the luxury end also google Jet Quay service in Singapore. They organise a service to meet you at the plane door with a buggy, someone else gets your luggage, they take you to a CIP private terminal and you wait there whilst they fetch your luggage and put it straight into the back of a limmo which then takes you into town. Effectively you don't see or touch your luggage from Heathrow until you see it in your hotel suite or room if you choose your hotel wisely.

Some thoughts ... I hope they help.

Enjoy Singapore and ask any more questions.

Swiss Tony

From the kids' perspective, I would look at the flight timings.

I can't see the appeal of going via the middle east as that breaks the journey probably right when everyone is asleep. If you do go via the gulf then break the journey for a few days.

The best flight time I think is ex-London late afternoon/early evening. That means the kids can have something to eat then get settled down. Chances are they can then sleep most of the way to Singapore.

Also bear in mind the seat layouts - some will be better than others. The 4 year old will need his own seat for take off and landing, so you want to make sure you can keep an eye on him. BA F starts to get a bit awkward now that they have redesigned the seats - centre pair in J on BA would be better. If I recall correctly, the new SQ C is too private to be useful here, too. SQ F seems to be using a proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut - unless you've got £22k to drop on something like that.

uk1

Because (largely) of the need to keep the 4 year old occupied and awake ... I found myself almost suggesting going significantly "down class" and sitting 4 abreast. The most important thing is to prepare how to keep the 4 year old occupied. So the planning should be more around entertainment and "occupation".

In my view ...

SQ325

Agree, but latetst possible flight makes much more sense, though. Kids are often too excited, they wont settle down easily. The later it is the better they settle. Thats my experience.

It might be a good idea to fly via IST or the MiddleEast. Firstly they can strech and burn some energy. On the second leg they will sleep definetly.

LondonFlyer123

Thanks for the responses - I appreciate it. Even after suggesting some of these options, my wife has decided to give it a miss and remain in London until the children are older.

I just resigned today and my new role starts in mid-June, with a 2-week start in Singapore. So I will be going solo on this occasion. I have no idea what I will get booked onto, but presumably business on BA or Singapore Air - I'll post back when I know more.

But I'm looking forward to it - reading the other threads on here, Singapore sounds like a really interesting destination - all my previous travel has been to Europe, the US or HK, so this will be new for me.

invisible

If you plan to be here fairly often and will have a time during your first week - drop a message here and we can meet us somewhere to give you crash course in living/dealing with this place.

AA_EXP09

Y for me is fine, though I have never traveled with kids that age-15/16 years I have done before.
Anyhow, at the late hour, they should be able to sleep on the aircraft (both for I and most of my group-then again, this was towards the later part of the flight and it was a completely different flight-YVRPEK.)

uk1

The best of luck in your new job. Hope you get to Singapore soon.

Swiss Tony

Everyone is different, but what you need to be careful of is if you're on a 10pm departure from London and the kids are normally in bed by 8pm, you have that woeful combination of tired AND excited. By the time they're over the excitement they're overly tired, too. With my kids that means nightmare. You finally get them off to sleep but then they wake up at the usual 6am or 7am UK time, are still tired and you still have 4hrs left in the flight.

If you get on the plane a couple of hours before normal bed time, the excitement is ebbing away by the time bed time comes round & the rest of the cabin is settling down, too. Job's a good 'un.

stephem

Hey LondonFlyer123,
Although US based, we once lived in Singapore and shuttled back and forth with our youngest a few times (24 hours door to door with a plane change in Narita), all business class at that point. With one child it's pretty much always manageable.

We visit SE Asia annually now from the US west coast, now with 5, 4 and sub 2 year old. Last year we flew over to HKG on Cathay and found the timing worked really well, leave US at noon and landed in HKG in the evening. That was business class and perfectly tolerable. Our kids do well boarding rested as opposed to late or possibly well after their bed time.

For the flight home we did CMB-AUH-JFK-LAX, lots of connections but after the initial segment it was all F. Etihad suites were very nice and again we had a "daytime" flight (always light outside) from AUH-JFK and that worked really well for all the kids. There was some running around and what not, but we were 5 of 8 suites and the other people seemed ok (even amused) since it was a daytime flight. My daughter was old enough to get that she had a personal chef and had fun with that. It even worked out well for my 18 month old, he crashed out in a suite for nearly 7 hours.

Next year, we're coming back AUH-LHR-LAX with AUH-LHR on the Etihad A380 Apartments. Take a look at those, I think it's one of the better F products in the sky. Again, we picked daytime flying, leaving AUH in the morning, mid day connection in LHR and landing in LAX in the late afternoon (a bit of a step down to BA F for this segment, but we'll survive). These EY apartments are great, you can open 2 of them together and really have good space to play, etc. When we booked this we joked that this flight is so short and the novelty of the apartments so high that our kids wont even be done exploring when the plane lands in London.

You'll notice a theme, daytime flights... That works best for my kids, we all start well rested and in a good mood, fade a bit after some food and movies, maybe snooze a bit. One year we did LAX-HKG with a midnight departure it was terrible. It wouldn't have mattered what class we were in, they kept waking up and we really needed some sleep ourselves.

If I were you, I would look at EY, and maybe even take advantage of their free stopover and break it up. You can take the A380 LHR-AUH as the initial step, recharge in Abu Dhabi and then head onward to Singapore (suites type F product for that segment). I suspect you could get your family round trip airfare on EY for about 40% less than the SQ nonstop. It all depends on whether your wife would consider the transit a hassle, EY takes care of you end to end, but still that can be stressful exiting and returning to an airport to break up a long flight.

My wife is pretty picky (especially when we are traveling all together) and the EY suites experience got a thumbs up from her. Now she can't wait for the apartment experience. I think you'll get the same treatment on Emirates too, I haven't flown them but it looks their A380 is nice too.

Good luck and enjoy the adventure!

iluvcruising2

We took a short family holiday to Hong Kong this March and we stayed at the Eaton Hotel (380 Nathan Road).

I've put up many videos and pictures in my blog, for your reference if anybody is interested.
http://guitar123foodandtravel.blogsp...acau-2015.html

LondonFlyer123

Hi all,

thanks for the replies and apologies for the delay in getting back (and waking up an old thread). It's a year on and my daughter is 18 months and my son is 5. We're going to make that trip later this year.

I've been to Singapore 5 times now and settled with BA. I know it's not the best product,but I do love the BA staff. I think they are the best and the A380 is just fine for my needs. I've just tipped into gold already, so maybe an upgrade to F is coming on my next trip.

I've stayed at a few different hotels and settled on the perhaps boring choice of the Conrad Hilton - mainly because they include a laundry service so I only need to take 2-3 shirts and rotate. I like to travel light. I tried the Mandarin (OK), Ascott (reeks), Pan Pac (OK) and the Hilton is probably the most convenient. Right next to the MRT too, which I use (I hate taxis).

Stephem, travelling with 3 kids long haul (in any class) gets my infinite respect. You're a better man than I am.