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This trip report will be on the longer side, with more pictures and descriptions — as you might expect would befit the world’s biggest aircraft!
This is being published almost a year after my Vistara A321neo report on this very route — Singapore to Mumbai — which itself was published exactly four years to the day after the collapse of Jet Airways, once India’s premier international airline, which half a decade later is still undergoing a ridiculous struggle to relaunch that it will never win. Rest in peace, dearest Jet Airways; you didn’t deserve to die, much less for your corpse to be dragged on endlessly.
If 2023 was my biggest-ever year for personal aviation, this trip was the peak of the mountain, the culmination of a year of memories. This flight kickstarted an epic 11-day-long trip across both India (to spend Christmas with my parents) and Vietnam — a new country for me — to usher in the New Year, and, to make it as exotic as possible, I wove in a detour via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific: a decision I will never regret. There were a total of seven flights, including Singapore Airlines (at the start and end) and its Indian offshoot Vistara — which I’d flown before — in addition to CX and the two biggest airlines in the Indochinese country: VietJetAir and Vietnam Airlines. But the first leg of this odyssey absolutely HAD to be on the gigantic A380 superjumbo. Nothing less than the world’s largest passenger aircraft would be enough to round off an exceptionally extraordinary year (see my flight history here) for personal travel.
My previous record for the most flights in a year was set in 2022, with 15 flights (including five A350s, among them the 10,000th of all time!) — a landmark record-setting year in its own right — but 2023 not only breached that mark, it almost doubled it. With a whopping 27 flights across 16 airlines, six of which — as you’ll find below — were in the last ten days of the year, the records that 2023 made will stand tall throughout my lifetime. Among them were my first fifth-freedom flights, including Ethiopian (twice) and Gulf Air, and my first A321neo (on this same route, SIN–BOM) and A319 to boot, but none more majestic than the mighty A380, which is the centrepiece of this report. Booking it was no mean feat, given that the A380 flights to Delhi had crazy fares (nearly S$870!!!) around this time, as did the Mumbai flight on 22 December (Friday) which would have given me an extra day — so 23 December (Saturday) it had to be.
The crowning glory of 2023 remains my first flight on the SkyTeam alliance, on a KLM 777-300ER painted in the very livery of that alliance, which doubled as my first flight to the Southern Hemisphere: Denpasar, Indonesia, to be precise. (This came before two gorgeous A330-300s of alliance partner Garuda Indonesia, with pretty decals of their own, and absolutely soulful boarding music.) No wonder, then, that I intended for my final flight of 2023 to be on a fast-growing but low-profile member of that very alliance: Vietnam Airlines. The intention was to fly a VN widebody (preferably A350) on the Ho Chi Minh City–Hanoi trunk route, on 2023’s penultimate day, before a Singapore Airlines A350 took me back home from HAN.
Some things I’d planned for did not materialise, in particular on the two Vietnamese airlines: the VietJetAir A330-300 on the domestic Hanoi–Ho Chi Minh City leg gave way to a non-neo A320 sharklets, while the Vietnam Airlines A350 in the other direction morphed into a 787-10. However, they were by all means enjoyable flights, and infinitely better than Thai Airways’ penchant for swapping the ugly old 777-200ER instead of the A350. While I had intended to fly VN’s A350 — it has A350-900s, 787-9s and 787-10s; GA (or any other Indonesian airline) will never operate them — the 787-10 I received instead was still a great way to end 2023. (Go figure 2023 started with an A320neo and ended with a 787-10, while 2022 started with a 787-10 — as mentioned further below — and ended with an A320neo!) But that’s not what you have come here for!
The first Singapore Airlines A380 flight — three years after an on-ground dinner event
Now I must mention here that this was not the first time I stepped on the Singapore Airlines A380. In the gloomy locked-down days of 2020, when international air traffic had all but vanished beyond a small number of quarantine-restricted services, SQ had organised a series of on-ground events to recreate its signature flying experience on terra firma. There were three such programmes: (a) SIA@Home, a home-delivered culinary experience with prices going all the way to S$888 (then US$650) for a full-fledged First Class meal; (b) Inside Singapore Airlines in late November 2020, with a number of behind-the-scenes tours and workshops including a flight simulator; and © Restaurant A380 @Changi from 24 October to 1 November 2020, with pre-flight tours and meals across all four A380 cabins — the first few of which sold out in a few minutes! So much so that SQ had to expand the number of sessions beyond the initial 2-day lunches to lunches and dinners across 4 days.
No prizes for guessing which one I went for! Some days after the first round of slots for Restaurant A380 @Changi were snapped up within minutes, leaving me in despair, SQ most kindly expanded the number of sessions, and after registering for the waitlist and being contacted by them, I went for the dinner event on Sunday, 25 October 2020 — 13 years to the day since the first-ever A380 flight in 2007 — at a cost of S$53.50 along with a pre-flight tour. On the evening of the event, I first stepped on board 9V-SKS for the pre-flight tour including the legendary Suites, and then on 9V-SKN for the main dinner event, where, if I remember, I was seated at 66G in the aisle and had a glass of Singapore Sling to go with the Indian vegetarian meal, the first time I ever had alcohol. I left Changi with a bucketload of goodies, including a batik rose, a pack of cards and a teddy bear!
This constituted my first taste of the iconic Singapore Airlines experience, though I did have my first and only flight on its regional wing SilkAir — if you must know the details: MI435, MAA–SIN, 11 Jan. 2020, 9V-SLS (A320) — before it was folded into the parent in May 2021. (SQ started to operate 737-800s in March 2021, and 737 MAX 8s with flat-bed business class in November.) However, my first actual flight on SQ would come only in January 2022 (two years to the day after SilkAir) — SQ529, also MAA–SIN, 11 Jan. 2022, 9V-SCD (787-10) — which set the stage for what was to come over 2022 and 2023. Of these, perhaps the most memorable flight on SQ was also the shortest: SQ126 SIN–KUL on 21 October 2022, on 9V-SMF, the 10,000th Airbus ever built. Three years after that experience, with flying having returned to prepandemic norms (except perhaps for China), it was finally time for me to fly the world’s largest aircraft, on the world’s first airline to operate it. Now that the SQ A380 no longer serves Melbourne in the summer 2024 schedule, India is the only country with two SQ A380 destinations: Delhi and Mumbai!
The SQ A380 would take me to Mumbai, one of my favourite airports in the world, and I would spend a night there before taking the Vistara A320neo — on a one-month-old aircraft, and surprise-upgraded to premium economy! — to Bengaluru in the early morning, followed by two CX flights three days later. (The A350 from BLR to Hong Kong, and the spanking-new A321neo with 4K IFE from there to Hanoi, with HKG’s Sky Deck, Intervals Bar and Chase Sapphire Lounge in between.) The A380 doing the honours this time was 9V-SKV, and funnily enough the trip was bookended by 9V-SHV, my fifth SQ A350, on Flight 191 (a number with sombre connotations in the past) — which was on the same day as the collision-crash of a fellow A350 at Tokyo Haneda.* This trip across India and Vietnam remains a landmark milestone for me, a microcosm of 2023 as a whole, and it all started with the SQ A380.
*Everyone on the JAL A350 was lucky to make it out alive (except a dog and a cat) — even as the aircraft was charred to bits — but all but the captain on the smaller Japan Coast Guard plane perished.
You are highly encouraged to read The MileLion’s account of the Restaurant A380 @Changi experience in Suites (link to report here), as the experience is punctuated with his trademark dry wit, humour and sarcasm.
Saturday, 23 December, afternoon. The first thing that popped up all over my X Twitter feed: the delivery of Air India’s first A350, VT-JRA, which would fly from Toulouse (of course) to Delhi. The A350 entered service on 22 January, and a month later I flew it on a morning domestic sector from Bengaluru to Mumbai. This was easily the biggest milestone regarding the Air India transformation, which was put into action in January 2022 with its acquisition by the Tatas, amplified in February 2023 with a then-record 470-aircraft order and reached a climax in August with a comprehensive rebranding event.
Meanwhile, SQ is in no need of a rebranding any time soon, and its headline Baker Signet font is very ably complemented by other fonts like Gotham in advertising and Proxima Nova (my username here), as you see below in the inflight menu. It’s not the perfection that is Cathay Pacific — or for that matter many other Oneworld airlines, including Qantas and Malaysia — but it still does very well indeed to convey that image of top-class luxury that you associate with SQ.
I went through all the aircraft in the 9V-SK* series that were in the air, and figured out that the one to operate my flight to Mumbai would be one of the three arriving shortly at Changi: 9V-SKP as SQ232 from Sydney, 9V-SKQ as SQ319 from London and 9V-SKV as SQ637 from Tokyo.
At around a quarter to five I set out for the airport, and — as is common in Singapore — a Hyundai Ioniq liftback turned up, but not in the blue livery of the ComfortDelGro taxis; instead this was a silver passenger Grab. It was drizzling, and I turned out of my apartment complex by the sea for the last time in 2023, heading to Changi for the 10-km, 15-minute ride, with the wipers doing their wiping.
Stuffed furry animals (including a Hello Kitty) nestled on the cosy dashboard, and soon we turned into Terminal 3, where Garuda Indonesia and Gulf Air — incidentally my previous two arrivals into T3, in June and November 2023 — shared the same door. None of those exotic airlines this time around: today, good ol’ boring/best SQ awaited, but with the biggest aircraft in the world after the sole An-225 Mriya was destroyed.
The boarding-pass printer kiosks were decked up in the holiday festive mood, and had a cute cartoon dinosaur to match — not to mention the giant pink candy house installation in the atrium of the terminal. With just the one suitcase for check-in — I could as well carry two, but the subsequent airlines on the trip allowed only one — I breezed through and got my boarding pass printed.
Then came the bag-drop belts, and again I was able to push the sole suitcase through, without the jhanjhat (hassle) of a passport name mismatch — something I’ve had to face before on both SQ and Scoot.
This done, I was free to roam the terminal, but decided against it, as I’d already seen the Rainforest Experience installation — as detailed before (TL;DR: press the buttons to make the sound play and the lights glow above the luggage belts downstairs) — as well as the massive pink candy house installed for the Yuletide spirit.
The SingaporeAir app couldn’t display the mobile boarding pass, not that it was required anyway, but my boarding was confirmed and that’s all that mattered. By now three A380s (9V-SKP, SKQ and SKV) had landed, and astonishingly enough an A350 (9V-SHB) was making what should have been just a 30-minute hop across the border from neighbouring Johor Bahru (JHB) in Malaysia, but instead had been looping the loop for three hours straight!
This aside, besides the number of fun widebodies having landed — including from ANA, Qantas, Turkish, KLM and Air France — I should note that another A350, 9V-SHV, had just landed as SQ191 from Hanoi: the same registration and flight number I’d be taking 10 days later at the start of 2024!
I recall that the regular Immigration counters with their scan-and-you’re-done machines were under servicing, and instead there was a dedicated lane of manual kiosks to the side. Anyone who’s done it here will know immediately that lying in wait for them on the other side are a vast array of luxe boutiques, with Louis Vuitton having a presence in Terminals 1 AND 3. However, this one wasn’t nearly as dazzlingly bright as the one in Terminal 1, which simply blinds you with its glamour. To the right was a new Lotte Duty Free, which led on to the B gates from where A380 flights tend to depart.
I gave all those a pass, and instead headed up to the food court on Level 3, which had a number of typical Singaporean hawker stalls and culminated in a 7-Eleven and a Burger King. Inside the 7-Eleven I found a few goodies and souvenirs, though most weren’t for Christmastime.
What I did find in there was a stand for fluffy, furry, adorable Beanie Balls — not as famous as Hello Kitty but still a registered trademark — the likes of which were sitting on the dashboard of the Hyundai Ioniq that took me here.
I lined up at the Burger King and grabbed a Spicy Chicken King before sprinting all the way to Gate B5, which wasn’t too far, but boarding had already commenced. En route my ever-clicking thumb took in those shops which had little to do with watches, fashion and jewels, instead focusing more on electronics and bookstores.
Followed by souvenir and toy shops, with the odd Victoria’s Secret and Lego in the background, until I reached the now-familiar entryway to the B gates with an arch ad for Chanel N°5, as it had also been the previous month on SriLankan. Past the B1–B4 gates I saw a bit of an Etihad tail, and then…
THERE SHE WAS! The first order of business was to look at the nosewheel, and see what letter was after K. The answer was V. A letter featuring in every aircraft registration in Singapore and India, and she would now be flying from one of them to the other. This, then, would be the first A380 I would actually fly on, instead of just stepping on as part of an on-ground series of events during COVID-restricted times.
Most passengers had boarded — the time was a quarter past six and it ws Final Call — but the last few of them were still queueing up for the at-gate security screening, and the holding pen was empty. With mine done, I now skipped down the jetbridge past the HSBC ads, and on the other side a range of other planes stood…
…including an Emirates, two Qantases and (not quite visible here as it was to my naked eye) United.
Unlike other airlines, SQ does not hand out earphones on board, instead placing them — they are reusable — in trays at the entrance to the aircraft. But who the hell cares when (a) you have your own earphones and (b) the plane you are stepping on is a FREAKING A380 SUPERJUMBO?!?!
This, officially, would introduce the world’s largest passenger aircraft into my travel journey, notwithstanding the fact that I’d had a taste (pun intended) of it in the October 2020 dining event. Go big or go home, I suppose!
Flight: Singapore Airlines SQ424/SIA424
Date: Saturday, 23 December 2023
Route: Singapore Changi (WSSS/SIN) to Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (VABB/BOM)
Aircraft: 9V-SKV, Airbus A380
Age: 6 years 6 months at the time (built: 7 June 2017, delivered: 2 February 2018)
Seat: 74K (starboard side, window)
Boarding: 6:15pm SGT, GMT +8 (3:45pm IST, GMT +5:30)
Departure: 7:15pm SGT (4:45pm IST)
Arrival: 9:40pm IST (12:10am SGT)
Duration: 4 hours 55 minutes
Notes:
• First-ever flight on the Airbus A380, though this is the third time I have stepped on an SQ A380. The first two occasions were during the Restaurant A380 @Changi event on 25 October 2020, when no A380 was flying due to COVID: 9V-SKS for the pre-event tour, 9V-SKN for the main dinner event. (I was perhaps one of the only people to have boarded two A380s: most attendees got to step on only one!)
• Seventh flight overall on Singapore Airlines, and first not on an A350 or 787-10. The next two were both on medium-haul A350s — 9V-SHV, SQ191 HAN–SIN, 2/1/2024, and 9V-SHL, SQ421 BOM–SIN, 25/2/2024 — for a total of 5 flights on that subtype alone out of 9 so far on SQ.
• Second flight to Mumbai postpandemic, after the Vistara A321neo in March 2023 on the same sector, with the third coming after barely two months on the Air India A350 from Bengaluru.
You know it’s a jumbo-jet when…
When, of course, you see a staircase. Given that the 747 is disappearing from passenger service faster than ever — Asiana was the most recent to do so, on 25 March — the A380 remains your best bet for a staircase well into the 2030s.
There were, as you might expect for Mumbai, a lot of Marathi-speakers on board, as that is the official language of Maharashtra state — even though Mumbai itself is more cosmpolitan and Hindi-speaking. Many of them were small children, whose mothers were going through the IFE trying to decide what to select. My own mother correctly remembered (not that she was expected to) that I’d boarded the A380 during the pandemic, even if it did not leave the ground!
It sure felt knd of funny knowing that there was a whole deck of premium-class passengers above. I proceeded to 74K, as always having a penchant to sit towards the back and in a K-seat with a commanding view of two engines instead of one, as a Biman Bangladesh 737-800 (S2-AEW, BG585) taxied for departure in the distance.
It had been a while — over a year — since I’d dealt with the more common KrisWorld IFE by Panasonic, with the journey arc on top, which unfortunately uses the done-to-death Montserrat font (a pet hate of mine) that has no place for an airline as renowned for its luxury as SQ. This Panasonic ex3 system is found on the great majority of the SQ fleet: A380s, 777-300ERs, 787-10s, A350s (long- and ultra-longhaul) and 737 MAX 8s — 737-800s have only subpar streaming IFE — in contrast to the Thales AVANT system which is confined to the 9V-SH* series of regionally configured medium-haul A350s, which I feel is far better designed (without Montserrat!) and which I’ve experienced more times now.
Inside, of course, was the KrisShop magazine, the only physical reading material that economy passengers get, since printed menus are confined to Premium Economy and above, and the SilverKris magazine has disappeared for good. Some Asian airines have gone about reviving their physical magazines, Cathay being one of them as I was to find out in a few days’ time, but those that haven’t (or won’t) — like SriLankan and Thai — at least have these duty-free glossies which, while more or less useless in terms of products I would actually buy, are still better than nothing!
In time, hot towels were handed out, and that at least is an aspect of the prepandemic SQ service that made a post-COVID return, unlike the SilverKris magazine. (The SilverKris website remains online, though, and is actively updated — just not as special as a physical one.) A well-to-do North Indian (i.e., Hindi-speaking) couple in probably their mid-forties was seated next to me, and I had to explain to them when settling in that I was the rightful occupant of 74K!
The captain made his welcome in a perfectly polished Singaporean accent, bereft of the lahs and mehs and cans that you associate with Singlish, and instead well suited for anything propah-ly British. This was followed by an automated female announcement in Hindi (no, not Marathi), in contrast to my flight to Bengaluru in June (registration: 9V-SHE, teeheehee?) where it was in Kannada. Meanwhile a female Indian FA, Anjira Bodra, walked down the aisle asking passengers to stow their belongings and open their window shades. (I’ve never seen a North Indian FA on Singapore Airlines before.)
It’s been a while since I posted the SQ safety video, certainly not with Hindi subtitles, so here it is: read what you can and try to decipher the Hindi as the Singapore Girl takes you on a sojourn through the city-state. The soothe and calm of the violin notes are only a reminder that you are experiencing one of the most tranquil airline brands out there.
Now for my all-time favourite part of the video: the tiny infant on the river safari cruise, his toothless little smile beaming with joy; the daddy picks up the little guy from the bassinet while the mother is radiant as she holds him aloft. Then there is a not-so-little guy, a seven-year-old, who spray-paints the plane along with his big guy before the emergency exits light up.
This was followed by the ‘brace, brace’ demo with two poised young ladies, and then by a little girl stepping into a life jacket — not that she by herself would be enough to counterbalance the little guys before (in terms of gender equality) — while her father does the same with his own jacket, blowing into it for full inflation.
What better way to finish this musical sumphony than with that symbol of elegance, Miss Sarong Kebaya, standing atop the Supertree Grove overlooking the Gardens by the Bay? And what greater persuasion do you need to be convinced that there are few cities as luxuriously luxuriant as Singapore?
In the meantime, A330-300 PK-GPV had landed as GA836 from Jakarta — I took this exact flight in June, except on PK-GPU with a sticker for the BRImo banking app — followed by 747F HL7420 as the cargo OZ393, en route to Ho Chi Minh City. By the time the safety video wrapped up, PK-GPV had pulled into the gate as our A380 pulled out.
While we pulled out, a Wi-Fi connection guide was screened, followed by an overview of the KrisWorld system, and then a proud reminder that the Skytrax World’s Best Airline 2023 was, for a change, NOT from Doha! (Honestly, is there another city in the world that is so hell-bent on dislodging Singapore from the world’s best airline and airport standings? I know for sure that Dubai isn’t.)
‘SQ424 has flown’, said the SingaporeAir app, even though all wheels were still very much on the ground! Among other things, some travel recommendations, with Mumbai being an astonishingly high S$1,899 in business class — are you sure that wasn’t Suites?
My mother wanted to know if there would be Wi-Fi on this flight, and I replied, ‘Definitely. This is Singapore Airlines.(Except over Indian airspace, that is.) Meanwhile I wrote down a wish for the next Christmas: flying another A380 — of Qantas — to Sydney, though that very much depends on award availability many months in advance!
These, then, were all the planes having landed in that span of time, including an A330-200 from Fiji Airways and two more from Qantas, with another A330 operating from Qantas — this time a -300 with the Finnair livery and registration — due for landing shortly.
The majestic but not particularly pointy wing of the superjumbo nearly brushed past the Garuda A330-300, before encountering a fellow double-decker: Emirates’ A6-EVR, the second-last A380 ever built!
We drew closer to Terminal One(world), with Qantas A330s and both Finnair aircraft — its own A350 and the A330-300 operating for Qantas — being especially prominent, as well as Air France, ANA and Turkish if you were not particularly interested in the blue-circle alliance.
Another thing I could spot from afar was A5-JKW, Drukair Royal Bhutan Airlines’ sole A320neo, which flies here from the Northeast Indian city of Guwahati (GAU) — this being one of only two international flights (continuing from Paro) for the largest city in the Northeast, the other being Bangkok–Don Mueang on Thai AirAsia.
At a quarter past seven, the four engines gave an almighty roar and the hulking beast lifted me out of the ships of Singapore for the final time in 2023, as I stared wistfully into the distance beyond the dark clouds and bright lights, reflecting on how life-changing and profoundly transformative the year had been.
Yes, I’ve shamelessly borrowed the name of Emirates’ ice IFE system, changing only the C from Communication to Connectivity. On my first-ever SQ flight in January 2022 I was able to control the inflight playback of movies with the SingaporeAir app alone, something that’s not available with the Thales IFE on the A350 Regional, and so I decided to try it out on this A380 by entering the pairing code displayed on the screen into the app. However, I’m afraid this did not go very far, and I turned to the Wi-Fi offering instead.
By now many of you know that SQ offers free unlimited Wi-Fi to ALL KrisFlyer members irrespective of cabin, the first major global airline to do so, though Delta is well on course. OnAir is not especially one of the fastest systems out there, nor is it available over Indian airspace — though 787-10s, (ultra-)longhaul A350s, 737 MAX 8s and newer 777-300ERs have their Wi-Fi from Panasonic instead, and so do not have any problems over Indian territory. The A380 and older 777-300ERs thus have the strange combo of IFE from Panasonic but Wi-Fi from SITA OnAir instead.
The first thing I do when connecting to inflight Wi-Fi — free on SQ, paid otherwise — is always to look up where I’m flying over in real time on Flightradar24, a thrill that never gets old. Above we were crossing the Malaysian cultural heritage hotspot of Malacca, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, whose airport (code: MKZ) is unfortunately no longer operational, as all commercial airlines withdrew from it in September 2023. At the start of March 2024 I had the chance to visit Malacca as part of a group tour with friends, and I’m afraid it was not for me… give me glitzy malls and skyscrapers any day, not old, crowded heritage buildings!
And then I filtered the map to show only SQ A380s, and saw 9V-SKZ well on the way to Delhi, and SKW and SKT on the final stretch from Sydney and Auckland respectively. (Also, can you spot 9V-SHV headed to Ahmedabad, in western India, above?)
Now it was time to decide on the movie for tonight, for you don’t fly these longer 5-hour flights without settling into the comfort of a movie. (On my previous SQ flight in July 2023 from Bengaluru, it was a redeye and so I contented myself with patriotic, motivational videos performed by SQ cabin crew during peak COVID restrictions.)
A male Singaporean FA, Soh Hong Seng — Mr Soh for those not aware that the surname comes first in Chinese names — handed out snacks in the form of pea crackers. As I hate popcorn, this was a far better substitute for that overrated but quintessential cinema snack!
For the record, I did watch Barbie — 2023’s highest-grossing film worldwide — on my upcoming trip to Vietnam. While the best experience came on the Cathay Pacific A321neo (to Hanoi)’s unimaginably crystal-clear screen, the flight was a bit shorter than the film, and so I completed it a week later on the HD-in-theory but much duller Singapore Airlines A350 from Hanoi. What a contrast!
Meanwhile apple juice was handed out for the small kids up by the bulkhead, and later, with mid-flight turbulence having shaken many babies into their wailing rituals, a Singapore Girl by the name of Shirley Ong went and cleared all the half-empty apple-juice cups lying around her.
In the DEFG seats in the centre, two young Indian girls (aged below 10) were kicking back — not literally! — to enjoy their movies, with their parents around them. (The timestamp you see is because I kind of ‘went back in time’ and set my clock to Indian time: 5:58 IST is 8:28 SGT.)
I headed straight to the Bollywood section without looking elsewhere. This wasn’t Thai Airways which never has more than three Hindi movies, none of which are well-known — this was SQ! These were the recent releases, covering the gamut from big theatrical releases (KGF: Chapter 2, Brahmastra - Part One: Shiva) to smaller indie films…
…but one in particular stood out: Pathaan - Exclusive to KrisWorld. This action-thriller was the first Indian mega-blockbuster of 2023, and the second-highest-grossing overall only behind Jawan, both of which starred the legendary Shah Rukh Khan, who made his acting comeback after a four-year hiatus. Why wouldn’t you pick a movie that grossed over ₹1,000 crore (US$120m), right!
This was the worst decision regarding an inflight movie selection that I’ve ever made, and you better believe me when I say this.
Drinks were rolled out soon enough, with your typical orange-juice/apple-juice options on offer, and I, as always, looked no further than Sprite.
With SRK’s latest release Dunki in theatres during the Christmas 2023 weekend, I thought it made sense to watch his grand comeback film on this sector, especially as on my previous SIN–BOM late-morning flight on the Vistara A321neo in March, I had chosen his feminist sports drama Chak De! India (2007) — also produced by YRF — and had felt greatly uplifted by it.
Pathaan, in stark contrast, would be anything but uplifting; it was numbing and dumb. Yes, worse even than the overwrought comedy-drama Jugjugg Jeeyo which I’d chosen in June 2023 to Bengaluru, and shared with my mother on how boka-boka (Bengali for inane and silly) that film was. At least that wasn’t made on a budget of hundreds of crores of rupees with expensive action sequences in foreign locale, and didn’t loot the Indian public to the tune of ₹1,000 crore…
As you might expect on SQ, the pre-movie ads were for Ulysse Nardin and Franck Müller and H. Moser & Cie — the last of which has the highly fitting slogan of ‘Very Rare’ — in addition to a long-time SQ advertising partner that is neither as expensive nor as well-known as those Helvetic horologists: Indocafé.
These were followed by the story of a couple celebrating their anniversary and recollecting the first time they’d met, with all those experiences shaped thanks to local bank UOB cards and privileges.
With one last luxury Swiss watch brand (Patek Philippe, Genève) out of the way, the film itself got into motion with a warning about potential upsetting scenes about ‘aircraft issues’, which I still do not understand.
Pathaan was produced by none other than the fabled filmmaker Yash Raj Films (YRF) — which I’ve mentioned in previous reports like this and this, and which also distributed Jawan — and forms the biggest (thus far) part of the so-called ‘YRF Spy Universe’. (Though YRF celebrated its golden jubilee back in 2020, the 50 Years logo remains used to the present day.)
Pathaan got into action, both literally and figuratively; meanwhile I spied on the screen in the row in front, and the familiar faces of Amy, Sheldon and Penny from The Big Bang Theory were entertaining that passenger.
The dialogues in the film were as cheesy and corny as could be, and you can read below how laughably bad they were, playing on all sorts of bad puns.
‘Pathaan is running here, Penny goes on there’, I noted down, as well as a bunch of random musings about certain scenes and sequences.
• At one point a pregnant woman — the wife of the to-be antagonist, Jim (played by John Abraham) — was point-blank gunned down, leading Jim to plot revenge by unleashing a deathly virus on the world. (Did we hear of that before?) I noted that of course a pregnant hostage had to be killed off, because how else would the scriptwriters use that detail to tear-jerk the audience for sympathy?
• Deepika Padukone, the leading lady of Pathaan, who had co-starred with Shah Rukh Khan countless times before, had the same dialogue delivery and chemistry with him as she did a decade ago in films like Chennai Express (2013) — never mind that she is a global superstar now, with a Qatar Airways brand endorsement to boot!
About an hour and a half after departure, dinner was served, with Anjira handing out the pre-booked (mostly vegetarian) meals before rolling out the others. Though she had served me the drinks earlier, my main meal was presented by Mr Soh instead, with a ‘rather clipped British accent’ — he might have well been on a European airline instead — and thankfully my first choice was readily available.
You can’t go wrong with Punjabi murgh makhani (butter chicken), bhindi masala (curried okra) and jeera pulao (cumin rice) any day of the week, and this was definitely one of the better meals I’ve had on SQ, as time and time again I’ve been let down, especially on Flight 714 — to Bangkok, not Sydney (apologies, Tintin fans!) — in December 2022. Together with an enviable spread of sides, from a mixed bean papdi chaat snack to plain yoghurt to a cup of water — plus orange juice for a change — to a tub of Udders french-vanilla ice-cream, the meal was one of the high points of the A380 experience. I do wish SQ would do without the milk-in-a-stick and bone-dry bread roll with Lurpak butter, though; it doesn’t help to add such carbs which are devoid in taste.
This was in sharp contrast to a subsequent SQ flight in the other direction on the A350 in February 2024 — an afternoon-to-evening flight from Mumbai (SQ421 on 9V-SHL) — where they took two-and-a-half hours to serve the back of the plane, and had completely run out of chicken dishes, leaving only the vegetarian and fish choices. The crew had to repeatedly placate some irate passengers, and ask them to kindly bear with them for the repeated and prolonged delays in service. We were more than halfway down to Singapore when the food finally appeared on the tray table, which I guess is one of the rare times I was punished for sitting in Row 66 and above!
Meanwhile the tomfoolery continued on the screen, getting stupider and stupider, with such pick-up lines as ‘Any cops in sight? Because you’re looking like a bomb!’ only lowering my opinion of the movie. A scene was also weaved in where SRK prevents a missile attack on a village in Afghanistan, and earns the title of Pathaan from grateful village elders.
Much more interesting things were going on at Delhi, with VT-JRA having finally landed at Indira Gandhi International Airport, and the X Twitter avgeek community going gaga over it… except AI’s social media team didn’t seem to have got the memo, as the last row of pictures explains.
Another critical development was the fact that AI had, after four months of dilly-dallying, rolled out its new logo and brand (launched in August) across its website and physical locations and assets. (For four months the website and social media stubbornly stuck to the old Air India logo, despite the rebrand of Air India Express in October, in which case everything was implemented from day one.) They truly look very pretty indeed, a quantum leap from whatever nonsense was there before, as duly noted by Ajay from LiveFromALounge, the leading Indian blog for acing the miles-and-points game.
I told my parents that Pathaan was an outright bad movie, but I was watching it nevertheless, but the food, in contrast, was superstar! Not long after, an apple juice was presented, and I made out that there was also an Italian/French male FA on the other (left) side, going by the flag on his lapel, who did not serve us. Not that he would be needed, certainly not while Anjira bustled about with her what-would-you-like-to-have-Sir demeanour!
After two slightly-short-of-excruciating hours — the actual film is longer; all song sequences had been cut out — the film came to a long-overdue end. I’m not going into the details of the climax, or the action sequences, or the global locales; all this has been done to death in Bollywood over the past decade or two, and continues to rake in hundreds of crores (billions) of rupees annually. For this money-making racket, otherwise known as the YRF Spy Universe, I have zero words of praise and sympathy whatsoever.
What I did after that was very much in line with what you, if you’ve ready my reports before, might expect: put down in my journal the three-year delta — no pun intended — between stepping on an on-ground A380 dining experience and actually flying the aircraft somewhere.
I was more than relieved to explore other areas of the IFE for the final stretch of the 5-hour flight, including non-Hindi Indian movies and some musical offerings, among them the famed Arijit Singh and Anirudh Ravichander, who both featured prominently in the music of Jawan as I’ve mentioned before.
Not that I was particularly interested in watching anything from The Big Bang Theory — S7 (Season 7, not the Russian airline from my previous report at BKK!) was on offer — but I opened one for the heck of it.
Another female FA, who was mostly serving other sections of the plane, handed me a final cup of water as she retreated into the gallery. Her name, Hajar Azwan, looked Malay, and this was reinforced by the Singaporean looks.
A different ad was played at the start, this time for another Singaporean bank, OCBC, which had recently rebranded — shortening its name from OCBC Bank — in order to focus more on what it calls ‘Greater China’ (including Hong Kong) as well as Indonesia and Malaysia.
More than the actual content of the ad, I found the music (in the E-minor key) to be spellbinding, and loved the logo animation too. Crazy person, I hear you call me, but I value these little things about branding more than most others.
I exited the episode as soon as I knew what the ad was going to be, and moved to the onward connections and arrival information, neither of which was available. There was also not much to read about SQ itself, unlike KLM or Gulf Air, but it did have a whole section on the Kris+ loyalty app — earn KrisFlyer miles (only in Singapore and Australia) over and above your credit-card points — and the Pelago experiences portal, along with a QR code for the inflight menu.
While SQ does offer a detailed on-screen menu, that is (to the best of my knowledge) only available on the 9V-SH* series of medium-haul A350s with Thales IFE, while other planes with their Panasonic IFE (including A380s, other A350s and all Boeings) offer only a QR code to scan. My existing published reports don’t have them, but this seems to have been introduced afterwards, and both my SQ A350 flights in 2024 so far (SQ191 from Hanoi and SQ421 from Mumbai) have had it.
You can find the on-screen menu here, from my Hanoi flight in January 2024, and also from my flight from Mumbai in February for the Indian equivalent. (Unlike on this A380 flight, they ran out of the Indian chicken option on the other flight, as I’ve stated above.)
Eventually it was time to move to the Voyager 3D airshow as we commenced descent into Mumbai, with the classic blue Flight Information screen that so many other airlines have. There was a proper A380 rendering, as well as a number of destinations you could choose from to view travel-related snippets à la Lonely Planet, which I’ve also seen on Panasonic’s much more advanced Arc system — both on the Vistara A321neo in March 2023, and later on the Air India A350 in February 2024. (Thai Airways has something similar, but it’s a separate ‘Travelport’ app instead of being baked into the moving map itself.)
Here were some of sights and attractions around — as opposed to in — Mumbai, with much more focus on weekend getaway spots than iconic city landmarks, two big omissions in my opinion being the Gateway of India (they should probably have focused on gateway instead of getaway ?) and the picturesque Haji Ali Dargah. (Full resolution here.)
For what it’s worth, I had also done the same for Singapore, which was much more detailed with shopping centres, cultural hotspots and nature retreats. They are way too big for comfort and would distract from the theme of the report, so the links to them are here and here, if you aren’t bored enough already.
However, Bengaluru and Chennai sadly had nothing of the sort, with only population and elevation details. But that did not matter. Oh, the thrill of having a whole deck of people above you — it’s so surreal, you can never shake off the feeling. That the world’s largest passenger aircraft flies to two Indian cities — three if you count Emirates’ Bengaluru service — is itself a huge blessing from the aviation gods.
At 9:30 IST (or midnight SGT) sharp, 9V-SKV swooped down over the Marine Drive, the pride of Mumbai and the glowing belt of traffic, people and prestige that cemented it as one of the world’s premier cities. Then we descended over the slums surrounding the airport: while not as iconic as the Dharavi slums of Slumdog Millionaire fame, it was still a wonder that the A380 managed to manoeuvre itself over such large swathes of people every night!
All four engines and twenty-two wheels of 9V-SKV powered her landing on the hard tarmac of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport at 9:40, nearly five hours after departure. This fell shy of my longest flight until then, on the very same (SIN–BOM) route on the Vistara A321neo in March, which crossed the five-hour mark, and equalled my Cathay Pacific flight from Bengaluru to Hong Kong just four days later, which was a bit short of five hours.
However, these were all beaten fair and square by an honestly horrible inflight product two months later: the Air India A320neo on a redeye from Singapore to Delhi in February. This was (un)comfortably over the 5.5-hour mark, and it’s not a flight I’m proud of taking, even though it meant my first visit to the capital in nearly a decade!
We pulled up close to a Vistara A320neo which I could not identify, and passed by YL-LDE, a SmartLynx A320 leased to IndiGo for the winter schedule, wearing nothing but the IndiGo titles on a plain (plane) white body. My parents have flown a couple of those recently on flights between Bengaluru and our hometown of Kolkata (CCU) in the east.
The country’s largest airline had to lease a few A320s from the Latvian charter carrier — some with Latvian YL- registrations, others with Estonian ES- ones — to cover its shortfall, thanks to multiple A320neos being grounded because of Pratt & Whitney engine issues. In fact it has even gone ahead to lease a few 737 MAXes from codeshare partner Qatar Airways for Doha flights — much like it has leased two 777-300ERs from Turkish Airlines for Istanbul flights. Who said the world’s largest Airbus orderer (is that a word?) can’t operate Boeings?
Some interesting international (non-VT-registered) aircraft on the ground or on final approach — with much more coming up below — included A9C-CF, an older Gulf Air A321 that would soon depart for Bahrain, and B-KQF, a just-landed Cathay 777-300ER. This time, unlike back in March, I didn’t notice all the neighbourhoods split into West and East on Google Maps — from Bandra West to Andheri East (where the airport is), from Dadar West to Mulund East.
However, the very fact that I was now so close to such localities as Andheri, Santacruz and Vile Parle — where much of the city and country’s economic and corporate activity takes place — gave me goosebumps and thrilled me no end. This is the translation of the below dialogue with my mom, who was speaking to me.
Mom: I used to have a Singapore Airlines uniform, but that’s lost now. (Really good aircraft, in English.)
Me: I said Mumbaicha aapla swagat aahe (‘Welcome to Mumbai’ in Marathi) four times but you didn’t hear! (Due to the poor connection.)
Mom: Who said I couldn’t understand?
Me: Well then…
My goodness, all the planes about to land at this time were nothing short of fascinating, stretching the gamut from the Americas to Africa to the Far East — and my A380 ruled over them all. This was ALMOST as mind-bogglingly diverse as Bangkok Suvarnabhumi’s range of Russian, Chinese, African and Central Asian airlines. Here they were (feel free to skip):
A320s: VT-EXO, Air India’s Star Alliance-liveried A320neo. A321s: Vietnam Airlines from Hanoi. A330s: VietJetAir — from Ho Chi Minh instead of Hanoi — plus Malaysia, Saudia, Swiss and Thai, all of which were A330-300s, in addition to an Egyptair Cargo A330-200 and even a Uganda Airlines A330-800neo! A350s: A British Airways A350-1000; another from Etihad was on the ground, covered down below.
737s: An Iraqi Airways 737-800, then 737s from sister carriers Batik Air Malaysia (an -800) and Thai Lion Air(a -900ER), and another of Turkish leisure carrier Corendon Airlines leased to local budget airline SpiceJet. 777s: A -200ER of KLM and two -300ERs from Air France and Cathay Pacific. 787s: An Air Canada 787-9 from London — not direct from Toronto or Vancouver; avoiding Russian airspace would make it too long — and Star Alliance co-founder Lufthansa.
Eventually we parked beside VT-ALU, a 777-300ER having arrived as AI441 from DEL, which is one of the rare domestic flights to be operated by a widebody — not counting the A350s being deployed on domestic routes in the first half of 2024.
I thanked Mr Soh and Anjira for their service, complimented the former’s accent and the latter’s coiffed look, wished them a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and then moved away from the same drab grey seats that you find on the medium-haul A350 and 787-10 and also the 777-300ER. Then I went past the staircase, wished the same to the flight attendants at the gate, and shot one more look at 9V-SKV before heading into the TotalEnergies-branded (instead of IndianOil-branded) jetbridge on home soil.
To the left stood VT-ISA, one of hundreds of cookie-cutter A320neos, and to the left of that was an AI 787-8 that I could not identify. Further left stood A6-XWE, an Etihad A350-1000 that had arrived as EY204 and would now turn back to Abu Dhabi. Unfortunately, there wasn’t such a good view of the gorgeously golden EY A350-1000 as there was of the two mundane VT aircraft.
From inside the building, I made one final attempt to catch SKV’s tail, and you can’t say I didn’t try!
Then began the long haul (no pun intended) through the unending, arc-ing corridor lined with Indian sculptures — most had to walk all the way, but some were lucky to be buggy-driven — which culminated in the grand Immigration hall.
Few immigration halls are as golden and regal as this, I have to say, and only Changi (T2 in particular) and Kempegowda outclass this picture of opulence. That’s a far cry from the dull white equivalent at Delhi, and a bunch of mudra hands and bronze discs do not a dazzling immigration hall make. (Overseas, the one at Denpasar struck me as fragrant, sprawling and welcoming, also a favourite — with that country’s capital Jakarta T3 not far behind.)
Surrounded above by welcome-home HSBC ads, I whisked through in barely ten minutes, as the officials had opened enough counters to accommodate a full A380 of nearly 500 passengers, and there was barely any queue! Then came the Mumbai Duty Free immediately after, with your typical Christmas deals on chocolates, alcohol and fine things.
Really, BOM T2 is firmly among my favourite airports in the world, better than even Changi at times — all thanks to the pocket-friendly yet plush restaurants and retail spaces — and only BLR T2 beats it. Square numerals, tall cylindrical pillars and ceiling slats make it very clear that this is an arrival experience like no other. Besides my A380, other arrivees were from ZRH in Europe, and HKG, BKK and HAN in East Asia, aside from a SpiceJet — perhaps THE most ailing Indian airline there is — flight from DXB.
This is where I first spotted the new AI branding, with a rich red background and the golden ‘Vista’ holding shape framing the Bandra–Worli Sea Link — though I’d rather they put the Gateway of India there instead, as it’s a much more iconic landmark more than a century old. Futurebrand has hit a home run with the complete revolutionary rebranding process, but I’ll still be sad when Vistara disappears after its merger with AI.
For an A380, the suitcases came very fast indeed — 15 minutes tops (faster even than at Changi) — and then I went on to the post-arrival baggage screening, but not before one last look at the duty-free discounts.
I was amazed that it took so little time for the passports to be stamped AND the heavy suitcase to be retrieved — despite the fact that, as I wrote in Bengali, thik thik korchhe (it’s teeming with people) — and I told my parents as much. Now Vistara sent a reminder on what I could and couldn’t carry in my cabin baggage, not that I ever asked for one.
At the exit was placed a sign for the 141st session of the International Olympic Committee — first picture below — and then came the atrium where you buy SIM cards, exchange currency and simply prepare to head out into the never-sleeping Mumbai night. There were the requisite Season’s Greetings decorations in the standard red and green, while closer to one end of the terminal, people were lounging and relaxing on chairs.
A number of Bollywood celebrities graced the JCDecaux-esque billboards near the exits: Anushka Sharma for Michael Kors; Kriti Sanon and Varun Dhawan for Fossil watches; Kartik Aaryan for Armani Exchange — and, if you would rather prefer something (South) Indian, Rashmika Mandanna for Kalyan Jewellers. (She, like the jeweller, has grown beyond the south to become a pan-Indian and even international name to reckon with.)
With the obsession that we Indians have for celebrity endorsements, there was no better way to mark the start of my layover in this epically mad city, the home of business and Bollywood, culture and cricket, food and fashion — in short, everything worth living for!
Instead of heading right into the Aviserv Lounge — located just to the left of the exit doors (as you see directly above) — that my new Priority Pass membership (as explained below) granted access to, I decided to count down the minutes to Christmas Eve by hanging around in the myriad stalls and eateries that this awesome city’s awesome airport had to offer.
And, if you’re not yet all exhausted with so much reading, all you need to to is to click the Travelling Bonus button below to find out! (To be continued in the next instalment in the lead-up to the Vistara flight to BLR.)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this was one of those all-around excellent flights, with the meal and the service as worthy of the calibre of Singapore Airlines as the A380 itself. Flying the SQ A380 finally marked the completion of a crucial milestone in my travelling journey, without which a year as epochal for me as 2023 would have been incomplete, and there was no better way to kick off my grandest (so far) solo itinerary than finally being able to actually fly the world’s biggest aircraft, three years after the Restaurant A380 @Changi event in COVID-hit times. As the world has recovered from the pandemic, SQ has only grown stronger, more profitable and more luxurious, and I’m truly spoilt that this class-leading, world-beating symbol of blue and gold is the airline that represents my current adopted home country.
Though not as pitch-perfect and record-shattering as my KLM flight on the SkyTeam-liveried 777, or as heartwarmingly delightful as the SriLankan and Garuda A330-300s — those will forever remain a class above — this was by all means one of those flights where it was hard to find anything wrong. (This, sadly, was not to be the case in the other (BOM–SIN) direction two months later, with the shortage and delay of food!) The cabin crew, the dusky-beautiful Anjira and the polished Mr Soh in particular, ensured that no one was left hungry or uncatered for. While I’ve had my share of hits and misses on SQ for the two-plus years that I’ve been flying with them, this one stands out as an experience most befitting of the majestic beast that is the A380.
The one thing I have to complain about, if I have to nitpick here, is my own fault: I should not have fallen for the trap that was Pathaan — never mind the fact that it grossed a thousand crore rupees, thanks to comeback king Shah Rukh Khan’s star power. Few inflight movie selections have been worse in recent memory, not that I watch that many to begin with, and all the expensive locales and action sequences came to naught, for want of proper dialogues and a cohesive plot. But it’s not like I was bored to death that much anyway, as I had much better things to do… like just closing my eyes and feeling the sensation of the A380 as it whooshed through the night, from one of the world’s glitziest cities to one of its most dynamic.
UP NEXT: My midnight adventure in Mumbai Airport had just begun, and instead of catching forty winks I received a surprise upgrade to Premium Economy — my first ever — for the upcoming Vistara flight to Bengaluru. On top of which the aircraft itself (VT-TQT) was barely ONE MONTH old, by far the newest plane I’d ever flown, a far cry from the old-but-nice SriLankan A330-200 in April and the less-old-but-horrible Thai Airways 777-200ER in November. I was as excited as I was exhausted, and it took me half an hour at 3:30 in the morning to jostle my way into the Adani Domestic Lounge, but the sumptuous breakfast buffet made it all worth it. No better way to ring in the Christmas cheer, and set the stage for my most exciting trip so far, to bring an end to an exceptional year. Or is that eCXeptional? That airline from Oneworld most definitely is — but you’ll need to hold on a month more, to find just how much its perfection blew me away!
Les contributeurs de Flight-Report ont posté 14 avis concernant 2 compagnies sur la ligne Singapore (SIN) → Mumbai (BOM).
La compagnie qui obtient la meilleure moyenne est Singapore Airlines avec 8.7/10.
La durée moyenne des vols est de 5 heures et 19 minutes.
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Thanks for sharing!
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