SQ Economy to Bangkok - New and Old Y

[yflyer]

Earlier this week I did a short trip to BKK. After reading ycp81’s recent TR on TG to BKK, I thought it would be interesting to write up my impressions of what SQ offers on the same sector.

Like ycp81, I flew on a fairly new aircraft to BKK, and returned on one of the older planes in the fleet.

In fact, my return was on the venerable 9V-SRJ, with a hard product that had me travelling back through time to the early noughties. SQ has never done an aircraft with a retro paint scheme on the exterior, but they sure have a retro interior in 9V-SRJ…

[yflyer]

My outbound flight was on an A330, reg 9V-STL, a five year old aircraft with a two class J/Y configuration.

While waiting to board, I caught one of Scoot’s new 787’s pushing back and taking off.

This was an aircraft in Scoot’s SG50 paint scheme. I had only seen photos of this plane before, and did not find the paint scheme remarkable, but seeing the plane in real life and up close, I thought it looked really good. Perhaps the 787 is such as photogenic aircraft that it would flatter any paint scheme.

Far from looking like “Acne Airlines”, it looked really sleek and eye-catching, both on the ground, and in the air…

[yflyer]

Boarding for SIN-BKK took place on time.

The J cabin on the A330 uses the current regional J seat, which is a decent product. As SQueeze pointed out in his post on his flight on India on a refitted 772 they have changed the pillow covers and headrest covers to match the latest J product.



Although SQueeze was “horrified” by these changes, I didn’t find the changes that bad (Though I didn’t think they improved the cabin ambience either). I thought the change in scheme was less jarring than some of the other colour clashes that SQ seems to be becoming more prone to these days. The worst colour clash is, I think, the beige seat covers in Y on refitted 772’s, which have grey/purple plastic and dark blue armrest covers…

I passed through the first Y cabin (light blue seats), to the rear Y cabin (brown/beige seats).





Laid out in standard 2-4-2, I find the SQ A330 Y cabin and hard product one of the most comfortable Y products out there, practically indistinguishable from the Y product on the 77W and A380.

Emex row preferred seats…





The seats in the last row of Y have enough room behind them to recline fully.



From row 59 onwards in the rear , the layout in the centre bank of seats changes from 4 to 3 abreast.



If you sit at 58G, you can recline your seat any time without worrying about what is behind you because there is no seat there.

[yflyer]

Seat pitch is decent. There are no IFE box obstructions under the seats.







Even on this 2+ hour sector, each seat came with a large, soft pillow and blanket.



Disposable earbud headphones for each passenger. These were completely useless. Audio was disgracefully bad to the point of being practically unusable.



The worst irony is that the headphone packet says “With Compliments”. I can keep them? For what? Why would anyone want to take these home? The headphone plug is a two prong airline plug which cannot fit any phone, ipod or discman…

They should either go back to the headband style headphones or maybe just hand out just airline headphone adapters and not headphones.

[yflyer]

This being August in the SG50 celebration year, there were special editions of the inflight magazine and the IFE catalog….



The SilverKris magazine had great articles on Singapore that made this one of the more memorable editions of this magazine (Dare I say it, a nice SQ souvenir magazine to take home too…).

What is that strange aircraft on the cover, though?



There are also souvenirs on sale, including new A380 models with the SG50 paint scheme…

[yflyer]

Hot towels were distributed…these were steaming hot…you could see the steam curling and rising from the trays…



We taxi’ed in the late afternoon Sun towards runway 02C for take-off towards the north.



I saw a Qatar A350 parked next to an SQ 777, and noticed for the first time how similar the exterior dimensions of the two aircraft were.

A very steep take-off, with very good views of the reclaimed land, now a construction site, where the new T5 is going to be built….



Dinner was served on this flight…



No menus were handed out, but you were offered a choice of Western-style fish with pasta, or Asian-style pork with rice. I chose the Asian selection, accompanied by a glass of white wine.



Cups are now plastic, unlike TG which still uses a real glass in Y.



Seafood starter…



This was a little dry, with the lettuce leaves looking a little tired, but it was still a fairly decent starter, with large portions of squid, prawn and fried fish cubes.



The main course, pork with rice, was fairly satisfying. Some parts of the pork were slightly overcooked, but overall the flavours of the meat and gravy went well with the rice and vegetables.



Tiramisu ice cream for dessert…

[yflyer]

Towards the end of dinner service, I asked the cabin crew, which were all top notch, if they served Singapore Slings on this flight. Yes they did! Although I mentioned that I was just asking about this as a question, as I was curious about whether they stocked this on such a short sector, they practically insisted that they make one for me, and brought one over to my seat a few minutes later.





I spent the rest of the flight watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” series on the Krisworld IFE.



The city lights of Bangkok…







Segway-mounted airport police…

[yflyer]

I spent a couple of days in Bangkok, where I stayed at the Grand Hyatt Erawan, and sampled a local noodle dish, Khao Soi, in the hotel restaurant “You & Mee”, which MAN Flyer had recommended. Delicious stuff!

[yflyer]

I left Bangkok on the morning of a major public holiday.



The airport was very crowded that morning. While security queues were fairly quick, there was a massive queue at the immigration counters. While BKK has dedicated queues for ASEAN passport holders, which I used to speed my way through when I arrived, the crowds on departure were so long that the queue labels no longer mattered and the ASEAN line was filled with travellers of all nationalities. It did not help that many passengers also did not fill up the departure forms, which slowed down the queues further.

Eventually, I got through the immigration lines into the airside shopping and departure area. After a long trek through the airport, I located the Silver Kris Lounge, which was situated in a fairly remote part of the terminal. If not for the lifesize cut-outs of two different Singapore Girls leading the way to the lounge, I may never have found it.







The lounge itself was not particularly large, but fairly comfortable.



The seating area of the lounge overlooks a lush garden…

[yflyer]

F&B area…







Eggs cooked to order…





Local favourites like congee…



And a very delicious chwee kway…



A good lounge to spend a little time before your flight. Comfortable enough, with good F&B and reading material. A little far from the gates, though. Next time, I may check out the many TG Business Class Lounges (Star Gold Lounges) closer to the gates.

[yflyer]

Any reason why the airport buggies in BKK need roofs?



My plane was parked at a C gate in a fairly airy part of the terminal.

[yflyer]

My ride today was 9V-SRJ, a 13+ year old Boeing 777-200 series first delivered in 2001.



Jeez…are they still operating this bird?

Inside, I peeked into the J cabin…dark blue Ultimo seats…



I haven’t seen those seats in while! They looked pretty well maintained though, and as a hard product, I would not say that it is inferior to the new CX Regional J product, for example. Not a J product that would excite a passenger, and not a product I would want to encounter on a red-eye from CMB, MLE, MAA, BLR, or heaven forbid BOM or DEL. But I guess on a short sector like BKK-SIN, this would be no great hardship.

[yflyer]

In the Y cabin, it was a sea of blue…



I was seated in row 31 – the row with the infamous windowless window seat...



Not a seat I would have chosen if I had known there would be no window there. Thankfully there was no bassinet mounted that day.

The Y seat on this plane was the notorious model with the inflatable thigh rest.
This feature didn’t even work well when the plane was new. I had no idea how this worked back then, and to this day I still don’t know.

On the refitted 777’s, if you feel under the brown fabric, you will still be able to find this button.



And worse still, just under the thighs, I could feel a bar of hard material under the seat cushion which I did not find comfortable at all.

On the bright side, IFE was full AVOD, on a very snappy and responsive Krisworld system, whose back-end looks to be the same system as on the newer SQ planes. The screen was a small but sharp 4:3 screen, which was fine for watching movies and TV.



Rather than use the SQ-supplied headphones, I used my own (With an adapter). The sound quality from the IFE system, when using a high quality pair of headphones, was superb.



If flying SQ Y these days, do yourself a favour and bring your own headphones and headphone adapter.

This aircraft config has a bathroom in the no-man’s land between the J and Y cabins. As the curtain to J is ahead of the bathroom, it appears that Y pax are allowed to use this bathroom. A small victory for the masses who need to turn right after boarding…

[yflyer]

Today’s meal service was a brunch offering: either seafood noodles, or an egg omelette. I picked the noodles.



This was exceptionally good…very generous portion of prawns: Eight plump and tender prawns laid out neatly atop the noodles as if on parade for inspection…



The noodles were tasty as well…bouncy, with just the right amount of gravy. Thumbs up!

The rest of the flight was uneventful…we landed on runway 20R on a hot humid day.





Many empty gates at Changi around midday…

[yflyer]

Overall impressions? Good catering and excellent cabin crew both ways. It was quite a surprise to encounter 9V-SRJ on the return leg – the new Y product on the A330 is far superior to the legacy product on SRJ. The fact that my return flight was completely full didn’t help either.

In this era of strong competition from LCC’s I wonder how much longer SQ can fly older aircraft like 9V-SRJ and still command premium fares, and maintain their brand, though.

For frequent travellers like myself who fly SQ often enough on their new products to know that they are still one of the best airlines out there, I can treat the occasional flight on SRJ as a welcome opportunity for nostalgia. But for anyone who is flying SQ for the first time, encountering SRJ is going to leave a lasting impression, and not a positive one!

But on a more optimistic note, the cabin crew on both SIN-BKK and BKK-SIN flights, and particularly on SRJ, were top notch. Friendly, helpful and always “on the ball”. There was a mother seated with a young child close to where I was on SRJ. The cabin crew took such good care of her, ensuring that she had her food after feeding her kid, handing out kid’s toys to keep the child occupied. While the ME3 and other new airlines may have fancier and newer hardware, I’ve yet to encounter any other airline with cabin crew that make a more positive impression than SQ.

Thanks for reading!