Laos & Vietnam

Using some velocity points that I’d been stashing for many years I splurged and flew Singapore Airlines in business class home from Bangkok. Finding availability into Australia is hard, but if you’re happy to fly into a secondary airport you’ll often have more luck. In my case, that was flying into Adelaide. The timing for the flights was not ideal departing Bangkok around 9pm, arriving into Singapore about midnight then leaving for Adelaide at 8am the following morning.

I’ve been through Bangkok many times before but was glad to find a new SilverKris lounge since my last visit. After checking in about 1.5hrs before departure, I was in the lounge within 20mins and chilling before the flight. The new lounge had a fresh bar vibe to it and was pumping to the seams with people given a few Singapore Airlines flights were departing tonight.

I had a beef curry which was delish but decided I was going to lay off the drinking on this flight. I’m not a big drinker generally and find that when I do drink on planes (I love it) but the hangover (don’t love).

The 787-10 was scheduled on both legs, with the first plane 1 year old and the second factory fresh at just 2 month old. Business class on these planes is in Singapore’s regional configuration, but still provides full flat beds. I sat in both the true window and aisle window seats, and while I thought the aisle would be open, once you lay down it’s actually pretty private due to the padded shell of the seat back.

I used to love flying Singapore business class, and I still do love the service provided. They used to be world leaders when they introduced book the cook - allowing you to pick your meals in advance from a huge selection. They still offer book the cook, and most of the original dishes are still on that menu. Maybe time for a bit of a refresh as the food is, well, just not the best these days.

I found the meal served to Bangkok was just too moist (aka wet) and was just generic Asia flavour. The second meal I had was lamb from book the cook, and which was good, but not as amazing as it used to be. I remember the first time I had that dish many years ago I described it as the best lamb I’ve ever had. That it is no longer. The drinks list is extensive, if you’re drinking alcohol. The non alcoholic juices are not premium and they don’t really have many interesting cocktail/mocktail options. I’m being picky but I do think that they have slipped a bit in this regard. I do love the range of non alcoholic drinks the Middle East carriers serve for example.

Yes Singapore Airlines is still a great airline, but for me lacks that wow factor that many of their competitors offer. They do however offer extremely consistent service and keep a pretty good schedule in my experience. I arrived into Adelaide 10 minutes early where a sole ABF officer was responsible for clearing both my flight and the previous Qatar flight. That took a while. Would I fly Singapore again - for sure. They have an amazing network across Asia and offer consistently good service. It just didn’t blow me away like they used to do.もっと詳しく