My usual year end round the world travel plans in disarray due to events unfolding after I had made some bookings, I hastily attempted to salvage some decent travel. I think I managed to succeed - with 12 flights on Singapore Airlines, all in business and first class, on several aircraft types and even managing to route such as to experience the new (well a couple of weeks old by the time I flew) first and business class on their new 77W (777-300ER) aircraft.
Be patient....Kiwiflyer is probably tapping away frantically at this very moment trying to get the TR finished. It will be worth waiting for...as we all know.
Due to some unexpected events and changes to my schedule I found myself cancelling a booked round the world and searching for ideas for alternative travel. Given the relatively short notice and being at a very busy time of year for airlines, I was relieved to be able to cobble something together that certainly wasn’t the most efficient set of flights but fitted my constraints. I would get to try the new business class on Singapore Airlines’ new 77W aircraft just a couple of weeks after the inaugural flights.
I’d been trying for an upgrade for a few weeks watching the nil availability even in full fare on the flights thinking an upgrade was impossible. Yet I managed to clear an upgrade at the last minute (day before departure) to get to try first class on the 77W as well. Yay.
So lots of SQ flights. Both business class and first class. Several different aircraft types. The newest first and business class products to look forward to. Yes I was anticipating this trip with glee. The observant amongst the readers of this little report will have noted I am referring to business class and not Raffles class. Yes it’s true that after using the Raffles name to denote business class for a long time, SQ has decided to conform to industry standard and call it business class – the end of an era. Still I can’t be too depressed as it is still one of the best business class products around, and with the latest improvements I am sure to enjoy the flights.
After a hectic morning with last minute meetings and seeing to all the miscellany of stuff that had to be dealt with before I went, I was glad to settle back on the way to the airport and start relaxing. Traffic was crazy and instead of the usual 30-40 minutes the trip took about 80 minutes. Fortunately I’d anticipated this and left earlier than normal. Besides I wanted to chill out in the lounge pre-flight and a late check in wouldn’t give me this option.
Arriving at the airport I head straight for the F class check in line, which I’m entitled to use thanks to my status. This is the only line in the whole check in area, for all airlines, without a big queue (or indeed any queue at all), on this very busy travel day. I’m processed for check in quickly despite the agent being new. It wasn’t until later that I noticed that she’d ignored the proferred FFP # and the boarding pass showed my Kris Flyer status only rather than PPS status plus the status of the FFP I am crediting miles too. Regular SQ flyers know this spells trouble. I guess I was distracted chatting to the SQ rep.
As usual I pay the departure tax to bypass the big queues at the bank (and avoid the machines using ATM cards to pay for departure tax). The check in agent asks if I know where to go for pre-cleared immigration and to the lounge, then pauses to think and comments “Oh I guess you already know that!”. I answer “yes, thank you” and smile.
Amazingly there is no queue at the immigration desk for premium passengers on SQ, CX, EK etc. So I am soon threading my way through the mass of people downstairs and then up to the pre-cleared immigration line. Here there is a moderate wait, but not as bad as the wait in the main queues. Then on the familiar trek through the labyrinth to the lounge, right, ahead, right again, left, right, up the escalator, and hard left. I’m welcomed back to the lounge by the bouncer.
As the lounge is fairly full I head for a shower to freshen up while there still are showers free. Then it is time for a snack – mmmm Christmas goodies as well as the usual fine lounge fare, and a drink or three.
The time to boarding passes quickly and I then notice the incorrect FFP on my boarding pass. So I head out to the gate a couple of minutes early (for NZ are unable to adjust it in the lounge) and get the FFP # changed at the gate. Either it didn’t stick or SQ had already processed the mileage credits for the flight as miles did end up on Kris Flyer. Grrrr. This annoyed me even more than it used to as the upcoming February massive devaluation makes them worth even less than the larger number of miles I would have earned on another FFP.
But I digress. Boarding has now commenced so I head on up to my favourite SQ business seat – the upper deck exit row window. I am the first one to board upstairs, which is most unusual for me as I would normally wait in the lounge until boarding is almost complete. I grab a Straits Times and a couple of magazines and settle in with pre-departure drink while boarding progresses.
We push back on time, have a short taxi and take off over the city, turn and head across the Tasman Sea. Flight time is announced as being longer than normal due to strong head winds, and indeed our flight path is more northerly than average. So no views of Sydney or Uluru (Ayers Rock).
The flight passes quickly in a blur of eating, drinking, and watching the landscape of northern Australia and Indonesia pass by – at first under clear skies but from near Darwin onwards the view is glimpsed in between towering thunderstorms. We land to a wet Singapore somewhat late.
Only one runway is in operation and so we have a long taxi more than half way around the terminal complex to get to our gate – yup F60, the farthest gate from the lounge.
I head to the first class lounge for some Dom Perignon, and spend several hours catching up on emails and doing some work. FT was down much of the time so I got a reasonable amount done By the time I realised the time it was 4am and not worth going to sleep for a short while so I kept going, figuring that I would have plenty of time to catch up on sleep later. There were quite a few others staying up all night in the lounge, as well as the usual dozen or two sleeping in the slumberette rooms and sprawled across the comfy chairs.
When the lounge check in desk opened the next morning I headed over to get some more boarding passes. It took a lot longer, and more tension on my part, than normal to get these. First the multiple attempts to upgrade weren’t properly linked to my booking (upgrades get a separate record locator) so it took a while for the agent to confirm that I actually had a confirmed upgrade. Oh oh. Would I not get to try the new first class after all? What about the miles that had been deducted – could I get them back?
There seems to be a shortcoming in process – I had received no email or confirmation number for the upgrade, and I couldn’t even show him the deduction of miles from my account without the agent abandoning his post for I couldn’t use his computer to look up my account and the public computers do not have printer access (since earlier in 2006). Eventually I got that sorted only to find the next problem.
Whoever had processed the upgrade had confirmed it for a different flight to the one I’d booked – on the same route but different but similar flight number (SQ631 instead of SQ63). A simple typo but highlights why the recent renumbering of SQ flight numbers supposedly to reduce errors is far from perfect. In some circumstances being on a different flight wouldn’t have mattered but I had other flights to make. Could I get changed back on what is a very busy travel day? Will I have to reschedule my other flights to goodness knows when I will next have the opportunity to take them?
Fortunately there was still space in first on my original flight so I got switched back. Further I had the choice of a seat by itself, meaning there had been an aircraft substitution from 777-300 with regional product to 747-400 with longhaul product – ie Skysuites. Yay.
