Flying to Europe in Style with SQ Suites
So I am moving to Europe and that usually involves plenty of baggage, doesn’t it? What a good excuse to finally book myself one of those Singapore Airlines Suites on their A380. Over two years of collecting credit card points paid off and I had amassed the required 93k points.
Singapore Airlines is one of those sneaky airlines that imposes surreal fuel surcharges on award tickets. Luckily there are countries out there who have forbidden such games, including the Philippines. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might connect the dots now and figure out why on earth I would travel to Manila. That’s right – to start the first leg of my ticket to Europa, via Singapore. The same ticket originating in Manila, connecting in Singapore to Europe costs 22 SGD in taxes and fees versus 250+ SGD if originating in Singapore. And the miles required are the same. So even though I had to fork out a bit of cash to fly to the Philippines, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity.
The flight from Manila to Singapore was uneventful. I was primarily excited for my onward journey from Singapore. I had booked a nine hour layover to go to the city in order to collect my 50kg of baggage. SQ has a dedicated First Class check-in area in Terminal 3. From there its a short walk to a dedicated immigration and another short walk to the lounge. The lounge concept is funny – you enter the general Krisflyer lounge. From there they escort you into the First Class lounge. And once in the First Class lounge, they escort you into another lounge inside the lounge exclusively for A380 Suites passengers.
By the time I got there (my departure was schedule for 1.40am) there were only passengers of a few flights left. Soon after, the Zurich passengers were the only ones left. And that remained that way for a while… because our departure was eventually delayed to 4am. Not off to a good start.
But once onboard that quickly changed. The A380 is probably my favorite plane in terms of passenger comfort, especially in Economy. But also in First Class, it is not too shabby. My flight last year with Malaysian Airlines in First was great and so was Lufthansa’s First a few months later. SQ, just like Malaysian Airlines has their First Class section on the lower deck, while Lufthansa has theirs on the upper deck. The lower deck is wider, so the cabin feels more spacious.
I don’t think words are needed to describe the experience, only photos will do the fabulous SQ Suites product justice. Needless to say, I slept well within a few minutes of take-off.
The crew was fantastic. As President-elect would say – great people.
If you have the chance to book this, don’t hesitate. It’s an incredible experience or as President-elect would say – tremendous. I don’t think 13 hours onboard have never gone by so quickly.