Was excited to take my first A350 flight the other day from JNB-SIN. Cool-looking plane from the outside, nice curved winglets, and anticipating the usual good SQ service.
My excitement quickly turned to confusion and then extreme annoyance as I settled into window seat 17K. First, I am 6'2" (188cm) - tall but not inordinately so. I sit down and discover that I cannot even straighten my legs while sitting upright - the seat in front is too close and with no open space underneath. There is more room in economy to put your feet under the seat in front of you! Only if you angle your feet toward the window can you extend your legs much at all, and that's not great on the back. I've never seen this in a business-class seat before, and certainly not on SQ.
Then, if things can even get worse, the full-flat seat is a joke. Again you must angle yourself with feet closer to the window, but your feet and lower legs have to be stuffed inside a tiny opening. My US size-12 feet would not even fit! I had to try to sleep with my legs at an almost 90-degree angle. It was impossible to lay flat and extend my body.
This is such a massive failure for SQ, I can't believe this seat design made it through their review process (not sure if the fault of Airbus or some external vendor). It is literally useless for anyone over six feet tall. And I'm not some huge guy, I weigh 185 lbs, but it is not remotely comfortable to try to stuff your legs into this small compartment. I had a similar concern with United's new business seat that was rolled out a few years ago, but this is far worse.
So now for any overnight flight I have to make sure it's not an A350 or pick a different carrier. The video screen might be nice and large, but the inability to lay flat is a massive mistake on the part of SQ. I can't believe they blew it so badly, just to squeeze in another row of J seats. They will lose my PPS business for overnight long-haul if they roll out this crappy design all over the fleet.
