Greetings to all......
My first post on forum so hope its in the right place.
Planning to Fly J Class Singapore or Kuala Lumpur later this year and looking for alternative to Singapore Airlines who we have used in past. Last trip with SIA was SIN/MAN with the now enforced stop in Munich, which really is a bind. Having a stop and leave the plane when you are within an hour of final destination is a bind.
Favourites so far would be Qatar or Etihad to Manchester but am wondering about other European carriers so would welcome advice/recommendations from other forum members.

Malaysian Airlines is supposed to be nice - although it doesn't meet your specification of being a European airline.

emirates is usually the cheapest, and their aircraft are brand new, plus to manchester you can try out the A380 (J on the A380!).

i travel often between SIN/KUL-MAN/LGW.

With qatar, you do get the private premimum terminal, so that is one advantage.

both qatar and emirates have excellent frequent flier programs, but emirates has much better frequencies. Also, upgrading the Dubai-UK portion is only 25,000 miles, so you can try out the A380 suite next time you fly

MAS no longer flies to manchester, you have to go to that nightmare that is heathrow....

Emirates from Canada is definitely cheaper especially the new Visa fees for flying Air Canada

i thought the OP was based in malaysia/singapore

dubai is almost equidistance between my/sg and the uk, so a break to have some food (and more champagne!) in the lounge along with a shower makes the second 6 hour flight much more comfortable.

personally i sleep for the first half of the flight, stretch legs, check email,shower and eat in the dubai lounge, then get some work done on the second leg. arrive feeling much more refreshed than a straight 12 hour flight

the main lounge can be quite busy and full at times, but if you walk over to the second one that the silver skywards members use (same range of amenities) its much quieter.

Sorry.. I was making a point of reference that the same airline is also cheaper to fly from Canada, as it would be to fly from other destinations.

if you want to make even more savings, but dont mind a bit of hassle, J and F fares on emirates out of colombo are really cheap. You could take a budget airline/cheap ticket/even SQ to colombo and connect to ur emirates flight there.

Thanks for all the good posts. Interesting to see that no-one is suggesting the likes of AF/LUFT/BA/SAS etc etc.

As one post suggests, Qatar are good on price and the lounge facilities good but the waiting time in Doha is not the best. Right now Emirates and MAS are expensive compared to others in J.

Choice To/From Manchester is limited when compared to LHR but definitely not keen on transiting thru LHR.

From where I located in Kuching its easier to fly into Singapore rather than KL but fares from KL are somewhat cheaper (less expensive airport and taxes lower) but again prefer SIN as good airport to use.

I will have a look thanks.

i think you'll find that af/lh/ba and the rest will be more expensive than emirates. not to mention the frequent delays with AF and the threat of strikes on BA. I dont know if AF flies to manchester, but i know there are no direct flights on BA, you'll have to transit at heathrow.

what are the frequencies of SQ from kuching to SIN? if ur wait isnt too long, it still makes sense to just fly sq all the way to MAN....although SQ is probably gonna be the most expensive option of the lot. MH sometimes has good fares, but yea, they dont fly to man anymore.

AF is a bit cheaper than than Emirates from SIN to MAN (Yes they do fly to MAN with a change in CDG). I've heard both +/- reports about their J.
SQ do not fly KCH /SIN but their local carrier SilkAir do but are expensive. I usually fly to SIN on Budget for less than the equivilent of 20GBP. SQ SIN/MAN is about 1000 SIN Dollars more than anyone else right now so not considering and as I said before, I did it last time but it stops in MCH now which puts another 2 hours onto the flight.... no longer justifies the extra expense.

I have looked at your suggestion of Emirates from Columbo (and Bangkok) its worth further examination... can get Budge from SIN to both places.

Hi tuanton, New to this, thought id start off my making a contribution from my recent experiences... I fly from KL to Dublin regularly, usually in Economy, with Etihad. Route offerings are pretty similar to Manchester I think. They're pretty good in business, have flown it from KL - AUH and AUH - DUB a few times. My favourite touch was the express breakfast - you can sleep until 40mins before landing without being disturbed and still have time for breakfast, brilliant idea. Thing to watch out for is the lounge in AUH - note your times and terminals carefully. If you're in T2 at peak time (around 10pm - 1am) you'll be lucky to get a seat. If you're going through T1 though its fine, as the lounge there is way under-utilized. Happy travelling!

Hi, SilkAir is a subsidiary of singapore airlines, they use silkair aircraft for most of their regional routes. If you need to fly kuching-singapore-bkk/cmb-dubai/doha-manchester.....it sounds quite inconvenient unless you're going to enjoy a stopover at some of the places for a holiday..

Correct... Think I am moving closer towards using one of the Midddle East airlines probably from SIN.

if you fly more than 2x a year asia-europe or asia-US, its worth thinking about the frequent flier programme as well as the frequencies of flights to ur destinations. for example if i take qatar from sin-lgw, i have practically a day long wait in doha due to the low frequencies of the flights.

i booked a JAL SIN-NRT return flight for my girlfriend using my emirates miles, cost 30,000 miles which is pretty decent considering the cost of the flight ticket, so free holidays!

unlike SQ, with qatar/emirates you still get decent amount of miles even if you buy a promotional fare.