Review of Singapore Airlines flight Singapore → Bangkok in Business

Welcome to my second flight report about my trip to Bangkok via Singapore. The itinerary was planned to be full economy with Singapore Airlines, but when I received an upgrade offer to business class for 148 EUR, I decided to grab it for both me and my wife and enjoy the few remaining hours in the air in a more relaxing atmosphere with the benefits of having access to a lounge in Singapore & getting priority for our luggage and several other benefits.

As we currently disembarked the aircraft in my previous report, I went up with my wife to the SilverKris Lounge for Business Class in Terminal T2. We could have gone to a different terminal, but for a total of 2 hours we both considered to remain in Terminal 2 as we wanted to have some relaxing time and grab a drink or so. 

Though to make you aware that Terminal 2 is currently far from enjoyable as more than 50% is under construction for renovations, so we strolled our way to the lounge through a dead under-construction terminal towards to SilverKris Business Lounge in which we were kindly welcomed by staff. The lounge at this moment was pretty quiet and remained quiet throughout our stay. 

The lounge itself was not too big either, but food offering was sufficient for it and was targeted at both the Western & Asian markets offering multiple dishes for each of their likings.

I grabbed a few snacks myself before, while trying to do a bit of work myself to kill my time, so I didn't capture a lot of photos of the lounge itself and some of my photos were more blurred than I expected them to be, so unfortunately those photos will have to do.

We left the lounge at roughly 10 minutes prior to boarding.

At least Changi did their best to cover the temporary walls up with some decorations. A bit too posh for me, but it was much better than letting it be somewhat of a dull colour.

Gate F60 would be today's departure to Bangkok. Security in Terminal 2 is actually at the gate rather than in a main hall for all flights. It does speed up the boarding and security check, though I'm not entirely sure whether I'm a huge fan of it, because you'll need to exit it again if you fancy a drink.

The moment we arrived at the gate, boarding was already in process and we skipped the lane by using the priority boarding lane. The moment we were on our way to embark our aircraft for today's flight, it's shown in it's full glory. 9V-SMZ would perform today's flight to Singapore Changi Airport. A 3.2 year old Airbus A350-900 that would bring us in 2 hours over to Bangkok Suvarnibhumi. It's the 348th Airbus A350 built by Airbus and joined Singapore's fleet in October 2019.

A Boeing 777-300ER and 2 additional Airbus A350-900's were parked next to our aircraft.

We were kindly greeted by the flight attendants upon boarding the aircraft. My seat would be 21K and my wife would be located in the seat behind me (22K). A very spacious seat, yet quite a distance away from the window. I also would suggest to avoid to book seat 22K as it lacks any window. The seat also comes with a pillow and an amenity kit and blankets were available on your request.

It is also equipped with a very large personal TV, yet to my understanding it is not a touchscreen.

At least I couldn't get it to work and used the remote controller in the side of the seat to scroll through the tv. It also displayed the flight details of our flight to Bangkok.

While I didn't recline the seat for the short amount of flight, I feel like the lie-flat position can be a tad awkward and tight, though I would suggest to read other reviewers who actually have used it in the lie-flat position. Below the footholder, you can find some storage to store shoes or any goods. Also the privacy was rather limited as I could see directly into the passenger's cabin next to me and what she was doing.

The controls of your seat, lights and call buttons and the jack to connect your headset to could be found in the left side's armrest.

On the right aft side, you could find an universal power socket, two usb slots, a hdmi slot and another plug I still haven't figured out what's it for, though the area could have been better cleaned as there was a lot of dusk as you can see on the photo below… 

The table and a small storage unit could be found on the right side of your seat. The small storage container also contains your headset and I somewhat have a love-hate relationship with the mechanism of the table as I constantly kept touching it by accident, which made the table to pop out every time. The push to release system was a bit too sensitive in my point of view.

However the seat was equipped with one of the best window views on both the engine and the sleak-looking wing of the Airbus A350-900.

One of the flight attendants came by to ask whether I'd like a boarding drink. Water, Apple & Orange juice were available from the offering, yet champagne was available on request. I took an apple juice.

And yes, a mirror was also located in their business class seat which again did not look very clean like my previous flight in Economy.

Pushback was eventually engaged on-time and it took about 15 minutes or so to be taxiing to runway 02R. While Terminal 2 is getting a major overhaul, the runway 02C and a lot of taxiways also are currently being renovated quite heavily. Upon departure, the purser of today's flight was the sloppiest one of the flight crew as he forgot to lock one of the teapots which spilled all over the galley and beginning of the cabin's section during the departure.

While airbone, I decided to check the amenity kit given by Singapore for Business Class. The stockings are a bit low.

The amenity kit contained only a hand lotion, facial mist & lip balm from Penhaligon's, though I'm not familiar with the brand nor did I try out any of the products as of yet.

The time we reached a safe altitude, the flight attendants jumped into action and decided to clean that dirty galley first before showing up to take orders, which of course was and is the most logical thing to do so.

Today's menu consisted of three choices and was served by trolleys in the cabin. Singapore Airlines does provide you with the up-to-date menu via their website in advance and the menu was the same as briefed.

As said the food was delivered to us by trolley. The table that popped out of the right side of the seat was quite sturdy and able to be adjusted both in up-down position and forward-backward position to give you the optimal eating position to your liking.

Given that we're flying Singapore Airlines today, I, of course, had to choose for the Singaporean Nasi Lemak, which was pretty good for an airline meal. The chicken was very tender and the mix of anchovies with peanuts is something I actually like. The flavour of the coconut rice was rather bland and I did not taste the coconut in it.  

The female flight attendant that was serving our side constantly asked me if I'd like a new drink. She was very pro-active, yet not pushy and very customer-orientated. However the purser who forgot to lock the tea pot earlier became clumsy again when he cleaned the table of the lady on seat 22F (Aisle) by turning around to quickly…. This resulted in a knife and fork hitting me in the back. The purser quickly apologies and asked if I was ok and to quickly disappear into the galley after my response.

 While my table was cleared, I decided to pay a visit to the lavatory, which was a bit more colourful than the toilets for the Economy section, yet contained a very few similar amenities with only towels being the odd bird.

Next to the more colourful design of the business class lavatory, this lavatory also had a fake flower on the wall, however the lavatories are rather small on the Airbus A350-900 and could have used a tad more space.

The push-back was 1 minute past our scheduled departure and the crew of this flight were never able to win that single minute as they needed the entire flighttime to reach Bangkok, which meant that we docked at our gate exactly 1 minute late, which obviously is peanuts to judge them for.

A few birds of THAI still being in storage at the new terminal's site, which has yet to open… Not sure when the estimation for the opening of that pier is planned, but progress has been very slow so far.

Despite of me being not the biggest fan of Suvarnabhumi, I'm glad to see this again and to visit this wonderful country once again to meet up with my wife's family, friends and to explore the country again.

Given that SQ did not provide us with fast-track-access through immigration, the forward cabin helped me a lot as we were quickly to immigration, which was yet not too busy and took only 5 minutes for me to clear. I'm glad I did rush a bit as the line had tripled by the time I was done and would have taken over 25 minutes. Luggage was already on belt by the time I arrived to our belt.

After grabbing my bags, my wife and I took a taxi to our hotel in the Huay Khwang district of Bangkok for the next five days, which turned out to be a lot of friends and family visits and formalities to complete for both me and my wife.