pesos

If there is no waitlist available you’d have to search cash not redemption.

ZR2

See it now, looks like some searching on my end tonight.

jjjohn

I have the whole cabin for myself twice on LHR -SIN. Have the luxury to occupy 3 suites for myself.

pesos

I was referring to my particular flight - already half full

flyerfirsts

Does anybody have recent experience of how long in advance to get to frankfurt airport if flying sq26 suites?

BThumme

Just chiming in with my impressions/mini trip--report flying this. I flew SQ for the first time last month KIX-SIN-JFK (the nonstop) so I didn't have much to go off of for SQ in general. Overall I was pretty disappointed with most aspects of the pre and flight experience, but maybe I just had way too high of expectations.

Preflight stuff (some of it SQ specific, some flight specific):
Not being able to get a boarding pass in advance was a major pain. I had flown ORD-LGA on a separate ticket since united doesn't fly to JFK anymore, I was hoping I could get my boarding pass in advance to access lounges, but I couldn't. I got a message at first that boarding passes to/from the US weren't available until 24 hours within flight time (you can check in at T-48), but at T-24 it just said additional document verification needed - which is frustrating, because no documents were needed for my trip outside my passport. And you can't go to JFK to use a kiosk either, it has to be with a check in agent which only opens T-4. Managed to spend time at LGA which is now beautiful, with super fast-wifi and a steak shack for food. Took the Q70 bus to the E train to the AirTrain, simple enough.

Checking in was very slow in the business/suites section which I get access via Star Gold. I was grilled over the fact that I had a backpack and a duffle bag but no check on bag. My duffle bag was weighed - 11kg, and I was told that's a problem.I was not aware there is an absolutely egregious 7kg carry on limit - that's my fault for not knowing, but this is just silly. I travel with my xbox and that weighs according to google 4.45kg, I could have just moved that to my backpack but the agent was willing to turn an eye but made me make sure I didn't ask a flight attendant to put my bag overhead....okay then. It's just a small duffle bag, I never expected there would be an issue.

The check-in agent told me for lounge options I had three choices:
Air India Lounge
Primeclass Lounge
Or a $30 food voucher.

I'm not sure if this was because of my *G or being in Premium Economy, but he said I could only choose one of those. I told him I have priority pass and can get into the primeclass lounge, so took the $30 food voucher. Maybe he was saying Air India wouldn't let me, even though I was star gold? That's fine.

Security was fine, I had precheck and clear, the regular line looked to be moving pretty slowly. Took about 10 minutes from getting initial boarding pass to clearing security, in part because the walk to the precheck clear lane is at the far end compared to where the SQ checkin desk was.

Terminal 4 is pretty boring to me. There aren't a ton of views, and since I couldn't check in until around 430pm, it was already starting to get dark. I went to the primeclass lounge first, and got in via Priority Pass, and honestly it was pretty bare bones. It reminded me of I think the swissport lounge at T5 at ORD I had to visit during covid. No views, food was a small selection of hors d'oeuvres and finger foods, nuts, and room temperature soda and water. No alcohol was being sold. Coffee was via kcups. Wifi was useable, but my download speedtest showed 650kbps downloading. I spent a little over an hour there before leavin to try and get food.

This is the next disappointing part, I'll partially take the blame. I assumed it would work everywhere in Terminal 4. I went to Buffalo Wild Wings, they said they only take digital vouchers. Steak shack was mobile credit card ordering only. I went to one of the market stores and showed them the voucher and they didn't know. I went to the Terminal 4 help desk and asked the guy working there if he knew what restaurants took this, and he told me it was a lounge invitation (which it wasn't, it clearly says USD 30 Food Voucher). I finally found the Irish Pub by the A gates that said they could take it.

So preflight - not a huge fan of JFK (T4). I'm 95% connecting through EWR on flights in the area, and for flights to the city am really impressed with LGA. But this terminal just leaves a lot to be desired - maybe having access to the Virgin Lounge would have made the experience better.

Boarding:
Nothing too exciting, they lined up groups 4 and 5 first, which was nice because it took a lot of the gate traffic back off in the distance, then boarding was called for Suites then Business Class. I was told I could board with business by virtue of being star gold and had no issues doing so. The gate does use 2 jet bridges, and it splits off with a sign saying business right (to the upper deck) and economy to the left down below. Premium Economy is located on the front of the bottom section, but since there was no sign for Premium Economy and I was with a herd of business passengers, I went through the business class jetway expecting to just take the stairs down in the plane to my seat. Nope - gate agents told me to turn around and go through the other door. Fair enough, I'll take fault for that, and it certainly was an embarrassing walk of shame back.

The first thing I noticed when I got on board was how hot the plane was and lack of air vents on the plane, which certainly isn't unique to SQ either. As an observation, the premium economy section ran out of overhead space. The FA's were trying to move bags around and I got weirdly anxious they would try to move my tiny duffle bag and invoke the 7kg rule on me, but thankfully that never happened. One of the flight attendants did come to me though and say there was an issue with my backpack, because it was not 100% under the seat in front of it. So I just rolled it up and pushed it further under and she said it was okay.

There was no pre-departure drink, however we did have warm bottles of water available at our seats.

As soon as the initial chime happened for FA's to get out of their seats, the first thing they did was tell everyone to close their window shades - which bothers me because the flight is dark the entire time this time of year. (I'm a big window seat fan, I know there's the classic debate of if window people should be considerate or not to close the shades) - but again, the flight is dark the entire time, and I do enjoy seeing the lights as you fly up the NE coast of North America. I put my window at half shade.

Food
There was no book the cook preorder option available for my flight (There is for SQ26), but I was able to reserve one of the regular offerings and chose the shrimp and noodles which turned out to be very tasty.

Drinks given were really small in size. I ordered a singapore sling and the plastic cup they gave me was much smaller than I would have expected. It was tasty, but it would have been nicer if it was just a bit bigger.

Dessert was a pretty boring plain Vanilla hagen daas cup. On the SIN-JFK flight I had last month it was Cookies 'N Creme at least.

Seat
I also thought the seats weren't the best for someone as tall as me (6ft). I just couldn't get comfortable with my legs, there's a lot going on at the base of the seats, and as someone who is a slide sleeper I couldn't really get to my side. Also did I mention it was hot? I was sweating most of the night and don't think I got any sleep at all.

The IFE was pretty good and extensive, I watched a couple family guy episodes.

Breakfast offering was a margherita pizza which I declined.

Summary
And I guess that's really it - the flight really isn't that long. I was offered during check in a buy-up to business for a price that fluctuated between $501 and $508 USD which I declined. I paid just under $1,000 roundtrip for the flights with my return later this week. I thought the service was fine, but it really felt like economy level service/attention with just a slightly nicer seat.

I'll take ownership of not doing a couple things ahead of time (researching the carry on weight limit, restaurants at JFK T4), but this certainly did not live up to the very high expectations I had thought it would.

Pros:
I think $1k is a pretty good round trip price, however lack of star alliance partners at JFK is an issue (if it matters)
A380! (Although that's going away)
Seat IFE
Dinner was pretty good.

Neutral:
Service was neither good or bad.

Cons:
Temperature way, way too warm
Drink portions, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, were way too small. Which is an issue because when they are serving food, you only get a drink every 45 minutes or so.
JFK T4 is boring and basic.
The 7kg Carry on limit is a joke

So overall I give this about a 5.5/10 experience. It felt to me like a regular economy (basic economy with the 7kg carry on check) service with a nicer seat.

ijgordon

I think many of your criticisms are valid, but there's really nothing wrong with JFK T4. Complaining that it was dark even though you got to the airport hours and hours before your flight seems like a stretch. Yes, the challenge using the voucher is probably legit. But trying to get quality lounge access via *G (as opposed to flying in J/F), I think your expectations may have been too high, for a terminal where SQ is the only quality *A airline operating. They still gave you three choices. (Of course I think it's a more legitimate complaint for J pax that there's no decent lounge, as especially on SQ25 if you're just on the short leg to FRA, many pax want to eat before the flight and just go to sleep. But I guess the voucher helps with that, as long as they also let those J pax chill in a lounge after eating while waiting for boarding.)

And I'm 1000% with you on the hot cabin. I could barely sleep. I have come to actively avoid airlines/aircraft that don't have individual air nozzles at the seats. I have a smallish USB fan to bring which helps immensely in these situations, but I'd prefer not to schlep it around the world. I forgot to bring it on my SQ flight.

flyerfirsts

Is the downstairs not like the upstairs, where if you want a hot cabin sit at the front and if you want a cold cabin sit at the back?

Coffee drinker

Interesting that cabin temperatures still fluctuates so much. On my last SQ A350-900 flight the cabin was ice cold and I had to wear jacket and wrap in blanket. Is there some technical difficulty to keep the cabin at some comfortable level? Or can the FA manually change it to their liking?

flyerfirsts

both things are the case.

BThumme

Is that a thing? Even if it is, premium economy is only at the front of the plane, and I was in row 35 out of 37 (row 31 is the very front of the plane/PE).

carrotjuice

"The FA's were trying to move bags around and I got weirdly anxious they would try to move my tiny duffle bag and invoke the 7kg rule on me" - their purpose is to get everyone settled and flight to depart on time, FAs don't bicker about the weight of your hand carry.

"I was offered during check in a buy-up to business for a price that fluctuated between $501 and $508 USD which I declined. I paid just under $1,000 roundtrip for the flights..." - that upgrade price on top of the already low base price, for one of the longest routes in the SQ network, is worth every penny.

flyerfirsts

On Austrian the FA will bicker over your hand luggage lol. But yeah, I can't imagine turning down an $500 upgrade to SQ J.

BThumme

Right. I was only saying that because the check-in agent was very, very explicit with me to make sure the flight attendant did not try to lift/move my bag since it was over 7kg. He said they would enforce the rule, but I'm not sure how true that is or not like you said.


I thought it was a pretty good upgrade price, but it would be essentially just to sleep. For about 3-4 hours of possible sleep, it's just not worth it for me since I was only heading to Frankfurt, not singapore. For SQ26 on the return, I'm seeing upgrade offers of $800 for the slightly longer flight time FRA-JFK. Not getting additional benefits/miles (I credit to United) also factored into my decision.

Jean-Baptiste Legrand

But by taking 326 followed by 26 the next day, you got to enjoy two satay canapes instead of one. :-)