Review of Singapore Airlines flight Chennai → Singapore in Economy

Note: Several of my pictures are vertical (portrait mode), including many screenshots. Since Flight-Report zooms them up instead of displaying them in full, you are requested to open the image in a new tab to view it properly, if it is in a gallery.

I apologise in advance if this report is too lengthy, but this is because I try to capture the journey in as much detail as possible. 

BACKGROUND

Hello, bienvenue, namaste, and welcome to my first trip report on this site! I’m an Indian currently studying at Singapore’s prestigious Nanyang Technological University. I joined in 2018 and I will graduate this summer. Talking of summer… (mind goes back to the glorious summer vacations of the Before Times with longing and wistfulness) Having never visited any country west of India, I hope to visit Europe and the Middle East this summer, but before that, let me introduce you to this trip report that came as a much-needed respite after the events of the last two years.

These months have been brutal on the world, and on travel and tourism in particular. With all the travel restrictions in place for the past two years, there was pretty much no way for me to leave Singapore since my IndiGo flight touched down in the early hours of 4 March 2020. For 21 months, the only communication with my family was WhatsApp texts and calls, and the occasional video call. Life slowly resumed around August 2020, as did studies, and the world was slowly limping back to normalcy. My internship, which took place in the first half of 2021, was mostly on-site, involving a bit of commuting, and for a brief period I hoped to come back to my homeland during the summer vacation after the internship ended.

Then, in April 2021… You know the details of the ‘Second Wave’. Millions of Indians infected with COVID-19, hundreds of thousands dead, scenes of desperation and pleading calls for oxygen, a tale of complete and utter misery on the streets, corpses burnt or buried by the truckload, in what was to be the world’s worst outbreak in cases. My parents, too, were badly affected at first, but thankfully recovered soon enough. Naturally, Singapore and many other countries closed their doors on Indians and barred people coming from several South Asian countries.

But things improved starting from June. Vaccinations in India picked up a rapid pace, with the milestone of one billion doses being reached in October. Cases dipped and the country showed signs of resurgence. Meanwhile, Singapore was aggressively rolling out its own vaccination scheme, and by early August over 80% of the eligible population (myself included) had received two shots of the vaccine. I still harboured hopes of going back some time during December, but until and unless Singapore lifted its ban on travellers from India, nothing was going to happen. There was no choice but to wait.

And then, on 23 October (a bit over three months ago from the date of publication of this trip report), the news came like manna from heaven…

Even though the ban was now lifted, India was still under Singapore’s Category 4 of restrictions, which required a ten-day SHN (Stay-Home Notice), or a ten-day quarantine at a dedicated facility, without the option of so much as stepping out of the door throughout the quarantine period. Fortunately, there was more to come…

Timeline of travel relaxations between India and Singapore
 
23 October 2021: Passengers travelling from India and several other South Asian countries were finally allowed to enter Singapore, but were still subjected to Category 4 border measures, including a 10-day quarantine at a dedicated facility.
8 November: India was upgraded from a Category 4 to a Category 3 country as of 11 November, and the 10-day quarantine could now be done at a hotel of the traveller’s choice.
15 November: Not only was India upgraded from a Category 3 to a Category 2 country as of 18 November, meaning a shorter 7-day SHN, but it was even included in Singapore’s Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) arrangement from 29 November, applicable for select flights from Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. The VTL scheme completely eliminated the need to quarantine, with a pre-departure test and on-arrival RT-PCR test and a set of other ART tests being the only requirements (provided, of course, that you are fully vaccinated, and meet other VTL requirements).
Do note that VTL flights are applicable only to Singapore, and not from Singapore.
 
42 40 weekly VTL flights in all operate from each of the three cities, with the following distribution, all of them being overnight flights:
*  Delhi: Two daily flights, one each on Singapore Airlines (SQ403) and Air India (AI382).
*  Mumbai: One daily flight on Singapore Airlines (SQ423), a 5x weekly flight on Vistara (UK105) and a 2x weekly flight (Tue and Wed) on Air India (AI342, now scrapped).
*  Chennai: Two daily flights, one each on Singapore Airlines (SQ529) and IndiGo (6E51).

In addition, this paved the way for non-VTL flights from other Indian cities such as Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, with Singapore Airlines and its subsidiary Scoot wasting no time to relaunch flights to one of their biggest markets. Air India (Express) and IndiGo also operate a handful of non-VTL flights as well.

That India had leapfrogged in such a short time from ‘No Entry’ to Category 4 to 3 to 2, and now even a VTL, was simply commendable. Since I live in Chennai, I was lucky to be able to take a direct VTL flight from Chennai without having to connect. In any case, the city is one of Singapore’s biggest Indian destinations in terms of traffic, so it was a top priority for it to get VTL service.

Booking the outbound (Singapore to Chennai) was a decision taken with no hesitation: I made the booking as soon as the announcement was made on 23 October. At the time (before 29 November), Air India and Air India Express had a monopoly for flights to countries not covered in India’s so-called ‘air bubble arrangement’ countries, and international airlines were not allowed. There was no choice but to book Air India for the outbound on 11 December. That date turned out to be lucky for me, since it was only on 9 December that Singapore was removed from India’s ‘at-risk’ list, which eliminated the need for an on-arrival RT-PCR test; my friends, who had reached India earlier, had to go through the test. Even though SQ opened flights from 29 November onwards, the AI flight had a better timing as it reached Chennai earlier in the evening. That flight, however, is not the subject of this trip report; I hope to cover it some other time, my study commitments permitting!

For the return, as soon as SQ opened flights to India, I scrambled to get a VTL ticket, and within no time I had a ticket on my first-ever flight on Singapore Airlines! It was a no-brainer to go with SQ, since IndiGo, my usual pre-pandemic choice, was far more expensive — ironically, SQ is now the cheapest option to travel from India to Singapore, whereas pre-pandemic it was the most expensive — and offered a far inferior and uncomfortable product. It is a low-cost carrier in any case. Of course, I also had to get a dedicated Vaccinated Travel Pass for the flight, and not until mid-December did the Singapore government’s portal open for that.

I would of course have loved to fly the A350, especially since no Indian airlines fly any Airbus widebody aircraft since the collapse of (the first incarnation of) Jet Airways, which operated A330s, whereas Air India has the 787-8 and Vistara the 787-9. The A350 has a wider cabin and no overhead bins, and lacks the (sometimes annoying) dimmer windows of the 787. But since Chennai is a high-capacity destination for SQ, it is served using the bigger 787-10 instead of the A350-900. This had in fact been planned before the pandemic, when Chennai was served by the now-retired A330-300: an aircraft I have always found beautiful, despite how commonplace it is, but never been able to fly. SQ’s 787 passengers are not missing that much, since SQ has exactly the same product on its 787s and regional A350s, unlike some other airlines such as Qatar Airways.

In India, SQ flies its 787-10 to Delhi and Chennai, which, along with Perth, are its only 787 destinations outside China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. It flies the A350-900 (regional configuration) to Mumbai and Bangalore, as well as a once-weekly flight to Ahmedabad. Of course, SQ has been planning to upgrade the DEL and BOM routes to the A380 — leaving Chennai as its only Indian 787 destination — but this has been postponed owing to the Omicron outbreak.

Three other big cities — Kolkata, Kochi and Hyderabad (the latter two SQ did not serve before the pandemic, leaving them to SilkAir instead) — are served using the 737 MAX 8. Until the day before my flight, those three cities used to get the far inferior 737-800, which lacks seatback IFE, Wi-Fi and lie-flat business class seats, but the 737 MAX 8 has been serving Kolkata and Hyderabad from 10 January 2022, and Kochi from 17 January. A city as big as Kolkata certainly deserves a proper inflight product, if not a widebody aircraft: in fact it, too, was served by the A350 before the pandemic.

AVGEEK/travel HISTORY

Before I continue with this trip report, let me share a bit (well, quite a bit!) of my history with the Singapore Airlines group.
 
For over a decade I have had an active interest in commercial aviation, and follow some reputed blogs every day. Despite this, I have not travelled a lot by air, certainly not to a lot of foreign countries. Besides my education in Singapore, I have only been on foreign trips on two occasions: my first trip to Singapore (via Kuala Lumpur, which happens to be my first foreign city) in October 2013, and Thailand (Chiang Mai and Bangkok) in May 2016. In May 2020, I had planned to visit Kathmandu, Nepal, on a school outreach programme — I still have a voucher from Thai Airways from this cancellation that is valid until December 2022 — and for July 2020, my family and I had planned a package tour in Europe. Well, we all know what happened…

As far as my holiday flights between Singapore and Chennai (pre-pandemic) are concerned, almost all of them were on either IndiGo or Air India — with the constant refrain that Singapore Airlines was too expensive — and all of them (with the exception of one Air India 787 flight in October 2018) were on the A320. Unless you are flying Vistara, which I never have, Indian A320s are not especially known for providing a luxurious travel experience on international flights. There are neither an IFE system nor power ports, so for four hours, by way of company, you only have your own entertainment and the airline’s inflight magazine, which is another victim of the pandemic.

Still, you could not beat the punctuality of those flights: it was totally worth it to take a flight that departed Singapore in the morning and reached Chennai in the afternoon, or one that left Chennai at noon and reached Singapore in the early evening, with none of the stress and jetlag that accompanies redeyes. Sadly, all that is a thing of the past, and most of the flights from India to Singapore today are nighttime flights. There are very few daytime exceptions, none of which are VTL flights: the thrice-weekly SQ401 from Delhi, and the twice-weekly SQ421 from Mumbai, as well as the twice-weekly AI346 from Chennai and AI1368 from Mumbai. It is not worth it to take these non-VTL flights, even though they have far superior timings: unless you fully anticipate a 7-day home or hotel quarantine in Singapore, these are not recommended.

There is an exception to my flights on Air India and IndiGo, and that was my first (and only) flight on SilkAir. This was MI435 on 11 January 2020, operated by 9V-SLS, the airline’s latest (and last) A320. It had an unbeatable timing, leaving Chennai at 10am and reaching Singapore around 4:30pm, while providing a fairly comfortable experience — and inflight entertainment (even if only through streaming)! — and all the trappings that you would expect on a Singapore Airlines group airline. Sadly, MI has ceased to exist, with it being folded into the parent Singapore Airlines from May 2021, and all its A320s are lying forlorn and unused, except a couple (9V-SLL and -SLM) which are flying for Scoot. Chennai was SilkAir’s only Indian destination to be operated by the A320; all the others were served by 737-800s. Which was good news for me, since I am opposed to flying on 737s in general, even when not taking into account the MAX fiasco.

Owing to the lack of a dedicated trip report, which I hopefully plan to write some day, here is a picture of that bird when she was still proudly flying (though obscured by Chennai Airport’s unsightly infrastructure): 

And a picture of the inflight magazine, airsickness bag and safety card:

But even though I had never actually flown on Singapore Airlines until this month, I was nevertheless fortunate enough to snag a seat on its much-publicised Restaurant A380@Changi dinner experience on 25 October 2020. This was an exclusive dining event in October 2020 where people in Singapore could experience SQ’s storied A380 (pun intended), with different seating arrangements at different prices. I feel so lucky to have had this opportunity, and even to have stepped on not one but two A380s: first 9V-SKS for the aircraft tour in the early evening, and then 9V-SKN for the main dinner event. (Most people got to board only one.) The planes did not leave the ground, but it was more than enough for my first taste of Singapore Airlines’ most famous product (I sat in economy, though). Maybe I will write on that too one day, but for now, here are a handful of pictures:

With all that backstory out of the way, let’s continue to the actual trip report, which may be my first actual flight on SQ, but it is the fourth time I have stepped on a 9V-registered aircraft!

DEPARTURE: CHENNAI AIRPORT

It had been a wonderful month with family for the Christmas and New Year holidays, but with the new year, it was now time to get back to work and finish the final lap of my university journey.

A brief rant on Chennai Airport

Now, for all the developments in the city otherwise, Chennai has an awful airport. There, I said it. So has every other soul who has travelled through this airport, at least on an international flight. The government-run Airports Authority of India may be doing an okay job with some other airports across the country, such as Kolkata, but Chennai Airport has always been beset by a complete lack of motivation and interest in improving its infrastructure and common amenities. It is no uncommon sight for the restrooms to be in a less-than-satisfactory condition, or for the officials to be understaffed, and what can you expect from sarkari (government) officials? They want maximum benefits with minimum effort, and such a lackadaisical attitude is especially evident here. But what to do, it is home, after all.

The very few times I have visited private Indian airports such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, I have been struck both by wonder at how beautiful and efficient they are, apparently on par with Dubai or Singapore, and by the sheer disappointment of having to return to Chennai Airport, which drops the ball in every aspect. The domestic terminal, at least, is fairly modern enough. But the international arrivals terminal, and the old international departures terminal, have not changed a bit since the 1980s when they were opened. There has long been talk of a new integrated international terminal opening, but this has now been pushed to June 2022 at the earliest, and I am not holding out my hopes for it to open even then.
  
Chennai’s airport code, MAA, means mother in many Indian languages. But it is a very broken and dilapidated mother airport at the core, and unless it comes under private hands (which I doubt it will in my lifetime), I’m afraid it will continue to languish under the state government’s bureaucracy. No wonder almost every single post on the SkyscraperCity thread for Chennai Airport laments on the sorry state of the airport and wishes — in vain — for a private operator to take control of it.

The one thing that can be said in favour of Chennai Airport is that it is fairly close to the city centre. It is located in Meenambakkam, a bit southwest of the central areas of the city such as T. Nagar, Nungambakkam and Alwarpet. Anyone who has used Kempegowda Airport in Bangalore, for all its modernness and efficiency, has felt the pain of travelling 40 km between the airport and the city centre in rush-hour traffic. Nor is that airport connected to Bangalore’s Namma Metro train system, whereas Chennai Airport lies bang on the Chennai Metro rapid transit system, and indeed the metro network was built with the airport in mind.
 

Pre-departure

Anyway, on to the report. The day was 11 January 2022, exactly two years to the day after my only SilkAir flight — what a coincidence, indeed!

I was anxiously tracking which plane would be operating my flight on Flightradar24. All of SQ’s Indian destinations are served daily, with the exception of Ahmedabad — in the western state of Gujarat, and home to Prime Minister Narendra Modi — which is only served on Tuesdays. So I managed to catch this flight, SQ504, for the only time that week.

SQ528, where art thou… oh, there! Making the journey tonight would be 9V-SCD, a 4-year-old 787 delivered in May 2018. Isn’t she a beauty? I’ll call her the Singapore Chennai Dreamliner. Her last few flights were almost all to China (including HKG):

The last few shots of home, and my inflight magazine collection. I don’t know what happened to a KLM Holland Herald magazine from October 2014, which my dad had brought home from a lounge in AMS, and an Etihad Atlas magazine from July 2017, but the rest are all present and accounted for:

Some old aircraft registrations that I had spotted from my trips in 2013–2015 during my high school years. Suffice it to say that my handwriting was not good! ;(

At 8pm IST we left home. Apologies for the blurry photos, but I sure am grateful to live right next door to one of the biggest shopping malls in Chennai!

Vadapalani, a neighbourhood in the west of the city, was directly benefited by the Metro system whooshing above. You can see a bit of the Forum Vijaya mall, another big mall, in the centre in the last picture.

At Chennai AIrport

At 8:40pm we reached the airport. Chennai curiously has three separate terminals: the new integrated Domestic terminal (T1), the antiquated International Arrivals (T3) and the modern part of International Departures (T4), though some flights — including mine — leave from the old departure terminal instead. As for T2, that was the old domestic terminal that has since been demolished.

Much of the signage at AAI airports has been updated to use the new black-yellow-blue colour scheme and Mukta font, which really makes it look on par with the slicker signage at Indian private airports. But there is still a lot of blue signage that uses Arial Black in the most distasteful manner. You know you’re looking at a bureaucratic government agency when you see Sarkarial (Sarkari (government) + Arial), a term that I have coined to talk about the manhandling of this already infamous font by the Indian government.
  
Who would’ve known that SilkAir no longer exists?! Not Chennai Airport, apparently:

By the way, Air France is a relatively new addition to Chennai Airport. It operates a once-weekly flight to CDG (AF115), with the ancient 777-200ER, and luckily it happened to be operating tonight! This is the only SkyTeam presence at MAA apart from Saudia, which operates a few weekly flights to RUH and JED. Meanwhile Lufthansa, a long-standing operator to Chennai, has suspended flights to Chennai until March 2022 at the earliest, while it continues to serve DEL, BOM and BLR. Talk about short-changing Chennai!

Dear SQ, welcome back to India, indeed!

Now a picture tells a thousand words, and right here at 9pm IST were literally hundreds of aircraft swarming the South Indian skies. Some insights I drew from it are below:
 
* Plenty of SQ flights reaching South India at this point: an A350 (9V-SHO) to Bangalore, a 737-800 (9V-MGD) to Kochi, a 737 MAX 8 (9V-MBD) to Hyderabad and our 787-10 (9V-SCD). Three Deltas (Boeings) and an Oscar (Airbus)! Partly obscured by 9V-SCD is another SQ group flight to HYD: TR574, operated by 9V-TRR, an A320. Note that the 737 MAX 8 had started service to Hyderabad and Kolkata, but not yet to Kochi.
HYD is today the only Indian city to be served by both SQ and Scoot. Pre-pandemic, it was common for multiple SQ group airlines to serve Indian cities. In fact, Chennai was served by all three: SQ and TR daily, and MI 4x weekly.
   
* Interestingly, Singapore Airlines skips the letter X in its registrations, but Scoot does not. There is also a Thai Lion Air A330-900neo (HS-LAR) heading to Mumbai for a cargo flight at the top of the picture. The Lion group, too, is superstituous with its aircraft registrations, as they never end with A, B, C, D or E, and furthermore Thai Lion registrations cannot end with F or G either, so every series starts with H (such as HS-LTH for its 737-900ERs). For that matter, even Thai Airways skips the letter I in its registrations; therefore, in its A350 registrations, HS-THI is missing.

* And another SIN-bound aircraft at the bottom: 6E37 from the city of Tiruchirappalli (TRZ), which has very high demand to SIN. In fact, since flights between India and SIN opened in November 2021, IndiGo, India’s largest airline, has been serving SIN only from Chennai and Tiruchirappalli — which are both in Tamil Nadu (though only the former is a VTL flight) — and not any other cities, since TN has the highest demand to Singapore.

Anyway, it was time for check-in, and the queue was expectedly quite long, given the huge demand on this sector. I presented my flight ticket, vaccination certificate, negative RT-PCR report and students’ pass (the equivalent of a visa for long-term foreign students in Singapore), and was handed the following documents: a boarding pass, a baggage check receipt and an on-arrival card.

At 9:15pm, check-in was done, and I proceeded to security. This is the revamped signage, and it sure looks cool, along with the new departure hall. Most of the shops before security are closed.

Free Wi-Fi is offered at Chennai Airport, in conjunction with telecom company Vi (formerly Vodafone Idea). There was also a big Happy New Year 2022 installation.

It took a little while to get past immigration and security, since no matter how many electronics you remove from your bags and place on the trays, there is always a little something that beeps in the detector machine, so you have no choice but keep rummaging and removing, then hope that it will go through while you stand in the (gender-segregated) queue again. Once you get past with everything in one piece, you find yourself standing before a big duty-free shop, with the upcoming departures information screen next to it. There are further gates (17 to 22) in the modern departure terminal, but sadly I would not be using them tonight!

Some interesting cargo flights, including YTO Airlines from China. Chennai has always been a big cargo hub, and is home to Blue Dart Aviation, an Indian affiliate of DHL that operates ancient 757s. Most international departures from Chennai are during the night hours from 9pm to 5am.

At gate 17, both the departures (6E1775 and QR529) were to Doha. It’s only written in Tamil, unfortunately. Interestingly, Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways use the exact same flight numbers to Chennai: SQ528/529 and QR528/529!

The airport map’s graphic design and typography shows how up-to-date and modern an Indian government agency can look like — if only it tries!

In the distance, towards the end of the terminal, were some cafés. There was no international food chain here, though I believe the domestic terminal may have a couple of big restaurants. There were also shops selling knick-knacks and small electronics.

There were some TV ads cautioning against animal cruelty and trafficking.

I had a paneer tikka sandwich for ₹300 (around US$4, expensive for Indian standards, but such high prices are the norm at Indian airports) and a chocolate croissant for ₹100. Decent. Nice packaging. Did not take a picture of the sandwich.

Niner-Victor Sierra Charlie Delta (a.k.a. the Singapore Chennai Dreamliner) had arrived! Too bad the reflections prevented a better picture of her.

Then began the walk to the old international departure area, consisting of gates 11 to 16. You passed through an alley lined with traditional Indian paintings (which I could not grab a picture of) and that was the last bit of modernity till you boarded the aircraft. The new terminal as seen from the passageway — if only the whole airport looked as gleamingly good:

After the alley, I went down an escalator to the ancient departure area with its 1980s-esque low ceilings. There I joined the people waiting for their flights to Singapore, Paris and Kuwait. It was 10:10pm now.

We had Air France tonight, for the only time that week! A flight that Chennai struggled hard to get. It was supposed to have launched in April 2020, then was pushed to October 2020, but only in June 2021 did it get off the ground.

This reminded me of another flight to Chennai by ANA of Japan, which was launched in October 2019, and at the time it truly made me feel proud of how much my city has grown. However, nowadays ANA operates only one repatriation service a month to Chennai, with the last being a couple of days before.

SQ529 was boarding from Gate 16 tonight, with KU343 to Kuwait next door.

At 10:30, boarding was called, with those seated in the last few rows being called first. I took this opportunity to catch a better glimpse of the Singapore Chennai Dreamliner.

The Singapore Chennai Dreamliner: (9V-)SCD

Flight: Singapore Airlines SQ529/SIA529 (VTL flight)
Date: Tuesday, 11 January 2022
Route: Chennai (VOMM/MAA) – Singapore (WSSS/SIN)
Aircraft: 9V-SCD, Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner
Age: 3.7 years (first flight: 25 April 2018, delivered: 7 May 2018)
Seat: 66K (window)
Boarding: 10:30pm IST, UTC +5:30
Departure: 11:25pm IST, UTC +5:30 (1:55am SGT)
Arrival: 5:22am SGT, UTC +8 (2:52am IST)
Duration: 3 hours 27 minutes

Notes:
First flight on Singapore Airlines
First flight on a Star Alliance airline other than Air India
Second flight on Singapore Airlines group
Third flight on 787
First flight on 787-10
Fourth 9V-registered aircraft boarded* (and first 9V-registered Boeing) 
*including 9V-SKS and 9V-SKN during Restaurant A380@Changi 

Boarding

Boarding passes were collected. I wonder why they keep the big part and give you the little part. Also, I have no idea why Singapore Airlines boarding passes are so dully designed, especially for an airline with such a heritage and history of colour-coding Singapore Girls according to seniority.

Wipes and masks were distributed as a so-called care kit, in addition to economy class earphones.

Once on board, I wished the flight attendants a good evening and settled into my seat. If only the flight time were 1 minute! Unless you are flying the shortest flight in the world — on Loganair from Westray to Papa Westray in Scotland — this is a pipe dream. Meanwhile I was flying on the airline that operates the longest flight in the world (SIN to JFK), and will soon resume the second-longest, SIN to EWR.

It was time to explore KrisWorld, SQ’s famed IFE system.

Oddly, the sign-in feature remained unavailable during the course of the flight.

I am one who browses to remote nooks and crannies of the user interface, so that is what I did. I went to the connectivity information.

Some more movies to browse through, including the God-awful Sadak 2, which deservedly is the lowest-ranked Indian movie on IMDb: both because the movie itself is inexcusably bad, and because it was mass-downvoted by many people who opposed the nepotism culture in Bollywood. This came shortly after the death of a young star who was coping with depression and sent the country into shockwaves.

At this point I fired up the SingaporeAir app and loaded the menu for tonight. All menus are virtual, of course. The chicken and vegetarian options are South Indian delicacies.

These were the amenities that I could request for, and I sure did ask for eyeshades, being a fan of eyeshades in general and SQ eyeshades in particular:

Singapore Airlines is currently running a promotion where everyone, irrespective of travel class or status, can get free Wi-Fi until 31 March 2022. Normally only elite passengers and KrisFlyer members can access Wi-Fi. Having never flown on an airline with Wi-Fi before, I was excited to try it out on my flight, especially as this aircraft used Panasonic Wi-Fi, which can be used in India — unlike SITA OnAir, which is banned in India. I tried it and it was not working. Silly me, I thought, since Wi-Fi only works at cruising altitude. Or so I hoped. Except it did not work at all throughout the flight. Oh, well… 

These were the newspapers and magazines offered for download, though sadly SQ’s own SilverKris magazine has been discontinued, since it was last published in April 2020 at the very start of the pandemic. Curiously, Silkwinds and SilkAir Studio are still available for download, even though SilkAir itself is no more.

Inside the KrisWorld magazine, which is SQ’s only digital publication today, now that SilverKris is gone:

Time for the airshow, the standard product that you see across many airlines:

As you can expect on SQ, the cabin crew was warm and friendly, guiding passengers to their seats. I had a brief chat with one flight attendant, called Phyllis, and I told her about how I was excited to be flying Singapore Airlines for the first time, and how I had loved the Restaurant A380@Changi experience before. She responded to my enthusiasm and welcomed me on board. Every member of the crew went about their jobs with precision with a generous touch of friendliness.

The boarding announcement was made at around 11pm IST. An Air India A321 (VT-PPT) was in the distance, getting ready to fly to Muscat as AI907.

Shortly thereafter the safety video was screened, which was a tour through the sights and attractions of Singapore. Many airlines choose to showcase the beauty of their country in their safety videos nowadays. If only Air India did the same and dispensed with its ‘plane’ old boring safety video… though now it has been acquired by the Tatas, it can follow the lead of sister airline Vistara, which has a calming yoga-themed video.

The full video, without the subtitles and sign language narration:

Takeoff

At 11:15, we started to taxi. I find the sound of plane engines to be supremely uplifting. Nothing like the slow rev and pick-up of the engines (in this case the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000) to remind you that you are flying to a different, often distant place!

At 11:25 we were finally airborne, and I managed to capture some (blurry) pictures of the eastern Indian coast at night for the last time in months to come. I was simultaneously recording a takeoff video, which I will not publish here for privacy reasons, as some passengers’ faces were accidentally captured.

These are no masterpieces of photography, but they do give a sense of the wondrous feeling you get when you are above the clouds at night, and the glimmering city and its glowing roads and lights you are leaving behind.

On the airshow, meanwhile:

Last view of the Indian coast amidst the clouds:

It was nearly midnight when I jotted down some information about the flight in my notebook, as I always do.

I browsed through the entertainment selection for a while. It’s a good thing that you can skip through the ads on Singapore Airlines.

SQ KrisWorld has a very nifty feature where you can save a bookmark of your movie or TV show, so that you can pick up from where you left off on your next flight. Of course, casual travellers like me will not find as much use out of this as business travellers who need to be flying every few weeks.

It is easy to control the IFE system from the KrisWorld app. A tap on your phone instantaneously shows on the IFE screen. Talk about seamless integration!

At altitude

At 12:30am IST (3am SGT), the meal service was rolled out. I went with the South Indian chicken option, Kozhi Biriyani with Muttai Thokku (spiced chicken biriyani with masala egg curry), which despite its name was not spicy at all, and quite tasty. The meal was served with a side of bread, butter, bottled water, drinks (I chose simply 7-Up) and a decadent dessert, Chocolate Truffle Gateau. All this along with metal cutlery! Very well done, SQ, for living up to the first-class reputation!

After the meal service, everyone was either sleeping or watching movies on the KrisWorld IFE. I took the opportunity to browse through the Bollywood selection a little more, as that is what I enjoy most on a flight.

Nothing especially thought-provoking, though I do remember enjoying Dream Girl quite a lot, where a young man impersonates a feminine voice at a call centre and soon gets the attention of a number of suitors, including his widowed father! Lead actor Ayushmann Khurrana, now a Bollywood superstar, is well known for selecting unconventional projects and dealing with sensitive issues in a humorous manner.

A (dull) view of the overhead mood lighting surrounding the screen:

Another film, Indoo Ki Jawani, had an interesting and nicely animated title sequence featuring a flight attendant fawning over a passenger, among other things. But the film itself was not very well received by critics and is best avoided.

Before long we were within an hour of reaching Singapore, aided by strong tailwinds. It sure is nice to be living in a city which is only three-and-a-half hours away from Singapore (when flying to Singapore — on the return it takes longer, up to four hours), compared to the five-hour journey people from Delhi and Mumbai undertake.

I decided to get some shut-eye and play some relaxing music, and what better than Singapore Airlines’ boarding music selection. To me, the below will always be the best music ever crafted by an airline, and it never fails to bring tears to the eyes. Nothing better to remind you of the calm, luxurious and beautiful experience that is flying this airline. Too bad SQ does not play this any more.

Instead, there is this album of boarding music to listen to and relax, which is still very good. You can check it out on Spotify as well.

Some of the rest of SQ’s audio selection:

Landing

Soon I dozed off, and when I woke up we were around 20 minutes away from landing. Nothing like ships in the sea to tell you that you are landing at Singapore!

And then, at 5:22am, the wheels touched down and my first flight on this remarkable airline came to an end. The flight time was 3 hours and 27 minutes, among the fastest flights I’ve flown to Singapore. Here is a video of the landing for your enjoyment:

Reminders on the IFE for passengers to take their belongings:

ARRIVAL: SINGAPORE CHANGI AIRPORT

We taxied to Gate B5 in Terminal 3. This is the first time I have ever used Terminal 3, as all my flights to and from Singapore in the past have used the now-closed Terminal 2 — or, in the case of my Air India flight in December 2021, Terminal 1. After a round of goodbyes, I finally stepped off 9V-SCD, the Singapore Chennai Dreamliner, and made my way to Immigration. I did not have any mobile data left when I landed, so I had to use the airport Wi-Fi to top up my balance and make a call to family.

Notice how many of the SQ flights from India are codeshares with Star Alliance partners All Nippon Airways and/or Air New Zealand, as well as SQ’s Indian subsidiary Vistara, which is a joint venture with the Tata Group, the new owner of Air India. With so much in common between SQ, AI and Vistara, from ownership to alliances, maybe we will see the two Indian airlines merge in the future and show greater cooperation with SQ? Who knows.

There were clear signs for passengers on board VTL flights like mine to proceed straight to the COVID-19 test centre after baggage claim.

Plenty of flights arriving from India, including VT-ANO (AI382 from Delhi), the exact plane I had flown to Chennai a month ago. How fast a month had come and gone! Apart from the Singapore Chennai Dreamliner, the other Indian flights were SQ511 (Bangalore), SQ523 (Hyderabad), SQ403 (Delhi), SQ517 (Kolkata) and SQ535 (Kochi, not shown in this screenshot).

Baggage collection was from gate 47, which also had some bags coming from SQ345 from Zürich, another VTL flight. The process was very slow, unlike the previous month’s flight to Chennai, where despite the ancient baggage handling system of Chennai Airport, I was out in 15 minutes. I had to wait from 5:50am to 6:25am to get my suitcases.

As you can see, much of the arrivals are clustered in the 5am to 7am bracket, and pretty much all flights from India are in this list. You might be forgiven for thinking that we are back to pre-pandemic times with these many flights!

Then it was a matter of proceeding to the COVID-19 test centre. Lines were demarcated with typical Singaporean efficiency.

Photography within the test centre was not allowed, but there were hundreds of people arriving from scores of flights, and all of them were neatly partitioned into queues. The payment of S$125 had to be done in advance online, and for those who had not booked it yet, QR codes were placed at regular intervals that would take them to the test booking page. Within 15 minutes, I had my most painless RT-PCR test ever, and at 7am I was on my way out.

I had to take a taxi to my pre-booked isolation hotel; public transportation is not allowed for VTL passengers for travelling to their isolation hotel. I technically had to stay there till a negative result came out, which was around noon, but I was so exhausted that I started sleeping at 11:30am and did not wake up until 4pm! After that I checked out, bought a couple of ART tests at a nearby 7-Eleven, and proceeded for my dormitory in NTU. At 6pm I reached home and set up my room for a new semester, my final one at NTU.