Review of Singapore Airlines flight Bangkok → Singapore in Economy

After being bussed to the terminal building, it was off to the transfer counters to pick-up the boarding passes for the SQ flight. Luggage tags were also checked to ensure that our bags would be transferred over to SQ.

My boarding pass. Unfortunately, I would be relegated back to economy on this sector…




Then it was off to the BKK Silver Kris Lounge, which was located all the way at the end, one level below departure. A rather long walk from the usual SQ departure gates, I would say.




Longish lounge interior. Same concept and colour schemes as most other Silver Kris Lounges. There were not many users at this time.




The buffet area.




Cold cuts, cheeses and crackers, sandwiches, cookies and macaroons.




Hot buffet selection.




Pastries, dim sum and dessert.




Had some food from the hot buffet area and a young coconut.




Really yummy mango sticker rice for dessert. This was the special dish of the day, and only available upon request.




Cookie, macaroons and soya milk to end it all.




Went up to the departure area for some shopping of thai goodies, before proceeding to the Gate C2 30min before departure time.



18 April 2013
Singapore Airlines
SQ 979
Bangkok (BKK) - Singapore (SIN)
B777-200ER
9V-SVK
Economy Class

When we reached the gate, boarding was just being announced for Business Class passengers and passengers needing assistance. Being seated at Row 37, it would be quite a while before boarding would be called for us as Economy was boarded from the rear rows. 9V-SVK, one of the unrefurbished B772ERs, would be operating today's flight back to BKK.



Boarded and was welcomed by 2 stewards (chief and leading) at the door. Got to my seat at towards the front of the cabin and settled down. This plane still have the Spacebeds in Business Class and the blue seats with tiny PTVs in economy. Well, at least the seat pitch on the B772ER is rather generous at 34 pitch compared to the rest of the SQ fleet. Boarding took quite a while as passengers gradually trickled into the cabin.




At the gate.




The flight map was already switched on, but not the interactive portion of Krisworld.




A short 2hrs flight back to Singapore today.




All the stuff in seat pocket.




While still on the ground before pushback, hot towels offered and collected, followed by distribution of headsets. Doors were closed before scheduled departure time but we were held at the gate while awaiting pushback clearance. The crew serving my aisle was a rather friendly and smiley gal.




Finally we pushed back, accompanied by the boring safety video. A Sri Lankan A343 was seen.




Oman Air A330.




Had quite a long taxi to Rwy19R for departure. Sun was setting now,




Takeoff from Rwy19R, bound for Singapore.




Dusk over Bangkok.




Shortly after seat belt signs were switched off, the IFE was turned on and I immediately started with my movie. Not that I would expect to complete the movie during the flight, knowing how SQ would collect the headsets rather early (and I was right again).




Meal service commenced with the distribution of special meals by hand, followed by the rolling out of meal carts. 2 crew were serving on each side of the aisle, thus making service a bit faster. The pilot also announced that there were 12 cabin crew onboard today vs the usual 10, so I guess there might be 2 trainees.




The choices offered this evening were Pork with noodles or Duck with Pasta. I tried the pork while my seatmate had the duck. On the tray were also a starter, warm roll with butter, drinking water and dessert. I had a Coke Zero to go along and requested for 2 Singapore Slings for me and my seatmate to be served later.




Starter was a shrimp cocktail salad, which was rather cold and tasteless.




Opening the foil of my casserole, I had a feeling that that I had made the wrong choice….




The Pork with Noodles was just sliced pork in salty oyster sauce, topped on tasteless beehoon , with sliced celery and carrots on the side. Very underwhelming and definitely not what I would expect from Bangkok catering. In fact, it kind of resembled what I had earlier on Drukair Business Class.




The duck with pasta my colleague ordered seemed to be a better choice. However, where were the thai curries?? Here was when I missed TG's catering out of BKK…




Surely you can't mess up with dessert, right? Wrong! The thai-styled taro-banana type dessert had a very mushy texture and tasted kind of wierd. My colleague, a dessert person, had a spoonful and left the rest untouched.




The Singapore Slings were delivered shortly by the chief steward. However, while he was walking towards us with the slings in hand, I already feared for the worst as the colour of the Singapore Slings was as red as his tie! True enough, the Slings were mixed too strong! Fail! Thinking of this, I should have ordered a pineapple juice right then and added it into the slings… During tray collection, my colleague took a sip of the Sling and returned almost the full cup to the stewardess, and the stewardess was concerned that the sling was returned almost untouched, asked if the cocktail was to his taste. After my colleague remarked that the Sling was too strong, she seemed a bit embarrassed (not the fault of hers though) and offered other drinks. A plus for her service!




The dinner served on this flight was quite a disappointment, as compared to my previous SIN-LHR flight where the economy catering was really great! Or it was maybe I had set my expectations too high for the catering from Bangkok…

After the trays were collected, I visited the lavatory.




Cabin view. The forward economy cabin was rather full, while the aft cabin was half empty!




At 37min (yes, I remembered!) prior to arrival, the pilot came on with the arrival announcement and shortly after, crew came down to collect headsets and requesting all seats to be upright, all at 30min prior to landing! We had not even began our descent! Not that I was not expecting this. Again a case of too early landing preparations.

With the headsets collected, I entertained myself with the flight map. Looking at the map, we probably had another 200km to go, approximately the distance of KUL-SIN, and everyone already had their seats upright and cabin prepared for landing. A bit of an overkill…




Flew down to the south and turned back up towards the north for the approach. The night view of Singapore could be seen on my side.




Landing on Rwy02L and taxied to Terminal 3 where we disembarked from. Guess this plane would be performing a long-haul later in the night.




My seat for the flight.




Waiting to disembark.