SINGAPORE AIRLINES NEW FIRST CLASS 77W
The time until departure seemed to drag by and eventually I decided to head out to the gate earlier than normal. Boarding commenced when I got through security so straight up the airbridge and I was shown to my seat.
Despite the zeroed availability for several previous weeks first class was not full. With only 8 seats anyway and high walls on each suite the cabin had a very quiet and exclusive feel.
There are no overhead bins in first, so have to decide between putting bags in a closet or leaving them on the floor inside the suite under the front shelf, which limits leg space if you’re average height or taller. Thanks to the one carry-on rule I only had one bag so still had a small amount of space for my feet however if I had two bags there would be no space. I should point out that in bed mode your feet go on the front shelf – it is in seat mode that footroom is constrained by any carry-ons not stored in the closet. Hmmm not a good first impression.
While boarding proceeds I am given the usual SQ first class amenities – pajamas, amenity kit, slippers (same as normally given out only on the Japan flights except in the new SQ brown colour rather than the old blue), eyeshades, menu, newspapers, magazines. The menu has changed slightly and incorporates the beverage list in the same menu instead of being separate, and in a different folder from the usual first leather menu folder. The amenity kit is a new one for me with Bulgari replaced by Salvatore Ferragamo contents. The kit itself is a slim rectangular one with a small carry strap which folds into a pocket.
I check out the seat – there are more small cubby holes than the skysuite. The table is larger and has a nice height adjustment which means you can still use the table in bed mode. The drawer with pen and paper is no more. The side lights are similar to the ones on the side of Air New Zealand’s suite, but have less directional control. Given the width of the seat and the darkness of the cabin (for a night flight), if you want to read by side light (as opposed to the overhead lights) you do need to be sitting right under it – the light isn’t strong enough to reach the middle of the seat and be able to read by it.
But the most important bits are the seat/bed and monitor/IFE. The width of the seat is huge and can very comfortably seat 2. Indeed there are headphone sockets and lights on both sides of the suite. While the seat is comfortable enough and soft, I found the covering to be too slippery. I ended up using 3 large pillows to try to wedge myself into one corner of the seat to stop myself from slipping. To me the sense of proportion feels odd – the suite is very roomy but is not overly long.
The monitor is huge and in wide screen format. However as of yet the movies and shows have normal aspect ratios meaning they look funny
I hope SQ gets proper wide screen format shows, or at least reformats with the vertical bars of normal aspect ratio on wide screen monitor. The colour is crisp on the flat screen and I don’t notice much in the way of reflections.
My seat’s IFE crashed a few times (the other seats in first seemed to be okay), including just after the safety video was shown, and the onboard IFE engineer had to reset the IFE for my seat a few times before it got going properly. However it wasn’t a complete success for I lost access to at least the flight path.
The handset is a neat design with a mini screen showing menu instructions and also the remaining flight time (or was it elapsed flight time? Sorry I forget). The avod was reasonably responsive – a bit slower than Wisement 3000 but much quicker than some other systems are (eg Air New Zealand’s). An improvement from other SQ aircraft is that pressing fast forward twice gets 3x speed. However I prefer the system on Air New Zealand and Cathay Pacific whereby 2nd press goes to 4 times, 3rd to 8 times – for those are much easier to jump forward a long way through the film/show. A retrograde step, in my view, is the removal of the elapsed program time when pause, fast forward or rewind is used. With the Wisemen 3000 avod and even the Wisemen 2000 non-avod you could easily tell how long is remaining in the show (from published time minus elapsed), or how far to skip through to where you were from the last flight or before a system reboot. With this new system you can only go by what is showing on the screen and guesswork. The program menu system has been reorganised but is intuitive and easy to follow.
The bathrooms are huge and with 2 bathrooms for the small cabin there is almost never any waiting. To give some idea of the size, the throne faces forward and still has plenty of room in front of the deep basin. As usual SQ keeps toothbrushes and combs in the lavatory, plus aftershave and hand cream. A minor design flaw has the tissues below the cloth towels in compartments built into the wall between basin and door – this means water drips onto the tissue that sticks out and wastes tissues. It would be simple to fix, just swap them around so that tissues are on top then the cloth towels.
SQ has also changed the crockery, cutlery and glasses. The glasses for example have modern styling, but I’m not convinced I like it – for example with non-traditional shapes the champagne and wine tasted different.
With the eating, drinking (unlike
CGK’s flights we didn’t run out of Krug!), checking out the IFE, seat and cabin I found the time passing quite quickly and before I knew it we were having breakfast just before descent into Paris Charles De Gaulle. It was still dark, well before dawn, but there were no lights below due to the blanket of fog. The same fog that so disrupted flights in UK in particular.
Metres above the ground we broke clear of the cloud and touched down in the murk. We had a long disorienting taxi – eerie lights shining vaguely all around and lots of corners to turn on the way into the gate.