Review of Singapore Airlines flight from Hanoi to Singapore in Economy

Hey there, readers! How do you like the new Flight-Report website design? Me, I’m IN LOVE with it… and you better be too, because there’s a LOT packed into this report, from Barbie to the JAL A350 crash. Fitting enough that the report for my first flight of 2024 should be published along with the redesigned website!

Travelling Bonus (now renamed Tourism Bonus): (a) Some glimpses from the OUTRAGEOUSLY extravagant Lotte Mall Hanoi West Lake — especially where Asiana Airlines’ unbelievably cute K-mascots are involved — and (b) some extra scenes from Barbie’s climax, involving the creator, that I couldn’t resist inserting; feel free to ignore. (Yes, the same movie, the highest-grosser of 2023, that was actually banned in Vietnam…)

Introduction: The start of the year, the end of a trip

Over the middle few months of 2024 I’ve been writing about my trip across India, Hong Kong and Vietnam at the end of 2023, with experiences ranging from the Singapore Airlines A380 to Mumbai and brand-new Vistara A320neo to Bengaluru, to the Cathay Pacific A350 from Bengaluru to Hong Kong and A321neo onwards to Hanoi, to VietJetAir and Vietnam Airlines between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. It was in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, that I brought 2023 — a year I’d started in the Southern Indian metro of Hyderabad — to a close: a landmark year for my personal flying journey, with a whopping 27 flights across 16 airlines and diverse aircraft types. (No 737 among them, though — something that I finally had the courage to fly, after years, in June 2024!) A bit of a diversion here…

On New Year’s Day 2024, my last full day in Vietnam, I paid a visit to the Lotte Mall Hanoi West Lake, and BELIEVE ME when I say that it was the most extravagant, opulent, splendid and picturesque mall I’ve seen in my life. Yes, I’ve seen many of the most luxurious ones, including The Dubai Mall — I paid a weekend visit there recently (July 2024) —, Singapore’s ION Orchard and The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, Bangkok’s ICONSIAM and centralwOrld, Jakarta’s Central Park and Kuala Lumpur’s IOI City Putrajaya (the world’s third-largest mall) and Mid Valley Megamall. But none of them, mind you, for all their extravagance and luxury and sprawling real estate, match up to this one in Hanoi. Replete with a massive aquarium and seemingly endless retail choices, with the most ethereal décor I’ve ever seen, I could not have thought of a better place to kick off the year in splendour.

The year had just started, but the trip was almost finished, and on 2 January I had to return to Singapore for a happy ending — and no better way than the afternoon SQ191, operated as it was by the A350 in regional configuration, instead of the late-evening SQ193 (landing at 11pm) operated by the 737 MAX 8. Funnily enough, the trip had started off with the A380 9V-SKV, and so it would be 9V-SHV for this finale, doubling as the first flight of 2024. I had but one objective: to finish off watching Barbie, the highest grosser of 2023, which I’d started on the CX A321neo (with a 4K display!) to Hanoi the previous week. They say ‘last but not the least’, but this last flight was definitely the least important of the seven in this trip — and I’d intended for it to be that way!

But the day took a completely different turn well after arriving home at Singapore, and heading to the adjoining Jewel Changi mall for dinner. Nothing happened to me personally, but an accident-cum-miracle shook the whole world: this was the collision of a Japan Airlines A350 with a Coast Guard plane, where all human passengers (miraculously) survived on the A350, but all except the pilot on the smaller one sadly perished — as well as a dog and cat on the A350. With JA13XJ, the A350 in question, being largely charred to ashes — except the wings — it’s a wonder that every one of the 379 humans made it out alive from the burning inferno, thanks in large part to JAL’s no-nonsense, instructive safety video and the obedient nature of the Japanese. Now, 191 as a flight number has been involved in many unfortunate incidents in the past, including deadly disasters on American and Delta in the 1970s and 80s, but the significance of my flight number — and the fact that I too had been flying an A350 on this day — truly hit home with the JAL crash, and lent a slightly sombre touch to wrap up an otherwise exciting trip.

Pre-departure: Exit apartment suite, head north to airport

Tuesday, 2 January, morning. Having spent three nights (30 and 31 December and 1 January) at the Euphoria, a very affordable but lavish and lovely apartment near Hanoi’s West Lake, it was time to bid goodbye to this underrated but fascinating city which hides its treasures under a bushel. This was the view I’d had — overlooking the Fraser Suites five-star hotel — when 2023 became 2024 in Vietnam, and fireworks were being set off in the sky.

Mom wished me on WhatsApp and shared some views on my whirlwind New Year’s Day trip to the Lotte Mall West Lake, though she wanted more of the people of Vietnam, the streets and smiles. We all have our priorities when visiting a place! This was how the airspace looked like surrounding Hanoi on the second morning of 2024.

I hadn’t paid attention to the TV — oddly placed right next to the dining table — during my stay, but it was just when I was checking out that I had a look at whatever the previous occupants had been streaming!

At a quarter to ten, I set out of the apartment — with some Vietnam Airlines-branded napkins being interestingly placed in an Ikea box on the coffee table — I set out through an alley too narrow for cars to pass, and turned into a slightly wider street, where a red Toyota Veloz was waiting. At every turn was some sort of creative activity: one for learning Vietnamese, another for teaching it to foreigners, and a third for improv!

The narrow streets were packed to the brim with both heritage and style, without the hustle. Charming old roads with French colonial influence here, graffiti-covered walls there, suddenly giving way to a posh, hep eatery round the corner — that’s Hanoi for you! None of the colossal highways of Singapore, or even Jakarta for that matter, nor the manic energy of Ho Chi Minh City or Mumbai, but a laidback, serene place.

There was plenty of English to be found at every turn, but scarcely any French, which goes to show just how much modern Vietnamese urban life has emerged from the colonial and war period — all while maintaining its legacy and history wherever needed. From this pretty yellow bakery, to a bar with mulled wine and quiz nights, to the remarkable proliferation of graffiti, my eyes never got bored.

Then came the West Lake itself, the largest in Hanoi — though the Hoan Kiem Lake, home of the Old Quarter, in the east is probably in the famous — with its clean, wide lanes for pedestrians and motorists alike. This was followed by a wondrous, varicoloured ceiling of colourful little umbrellas suspended atop an arch, as we headed north to Noibai Airport.

Then came the object of the previous day’s fantasy: the Lotte Mall Hanoi West Lake, an oasis of opulence, a playground and a paradise — a symbol of just how far Vietnamese disposable incomes have come.

The bridge to the airport — without millions of colours

The Nhật Tân Bridge (Vietnam–Japan Friendship Bridge), which on Saturday night was lit up with 16 million colours, now looked devoid of such technicoloured fascination on this Tuesday morning — but it was still an architectural sight to behold. We became part of the procession of vehicles headed to the airport: some of them found in other South(east) Asian countries, and others, the Ford Transit van in particular, more or less unique to Vietnam.

SUVs like the Mitsubishi Xpander and Toyota Veloz (which I was in now) are sold in other ASEAN countries like Indonesia. Some other cars like the Kia Soluto sedan and Kia Morning hatchback — this is a localisation of the Picanto hatchback — are Vietnam- and Philippine-specific. These two, alongside Cambodia and Laos (and, officially at least, Myanmar), are left-hand-drive, in contrast to most other ASEAN nations.

It didn’t take very long to get to the airport, and indeed Noibai Airport lies only a short distance north of the city — though Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat airport is smack within the city centre. That’s in stark contrast to KLIA, a whopping 50+ km south of Kuala Lumpur and the greater Klang Valley, and at the very bottom of Malaysia’s Selangor province.

A couple of airport buses and a cargo terminal marked my entry into the airport complex, which, while having none of the award-winning façades and exteriors of Changi, is a perfectly okay facility.

All airports in the country are managed by the state-run Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), and it shows from the humdrum steel design. Unlike the busier and congested Tan Son Nhat (SGN) airport with little room to expand — hemmed in as it is on all sides (with the new Long Thanh airport opening in 2025) — HAN has benefited from the construction of a new international terminal, which opened in January 2015.

Christmas and New Year stickers were plastered all over the place, and as you might expect most of the departures were within East Asia, barring Emirates, Qatar and a very unique Russian visitor: IrAero’s IO894 to Irkutsk!

Inside, the ceilings were high and airy, as all big international terminals ought to be. Among the airlines having their check-in now was Starlux of Taiwan: founded a year after local carrier Bamboo Airways, it has soared and ascended the heights of luxury — winning acclaim all the way — while Bamboo has crashed and burned, getting rid of most of its fleet. A tale of two startups!

I, on my part, headed to the check-in counters of Singapore Airlines, the original premium luxury airline of Southeast Asia, and put down my luggage in order to receive the boarding pass for SQ191.

Elsewhere, fellow countrymen Korean and Asiana were having their check-in, and further down were Malaysia Airlines and another premium Taiwanese carrier, EVA Air.

I informed my family that I’d reached, and at the counter I remembered to put down my KrisFlyer number as part of the booking, in order to enjoy the complimentary Wi-Fi that SQ has now enabled for all KrisFlyer members across all classes. Right before me, an Indonesian family was flying to Jakarta, but on Malaysia Airlines!

I found it strange that Indonesia’s and Vietnam’s capitals did not have any nonstop flight connecting them today — and there was just the one flight overall, on VietJetAir, between the cities, but that wasn’t operating on this day. That’s all the more shocking when you see that HAN and CGK are both bases of SkyTeam airlines, so you’d think at least Vietnam Airlines would fly the route, since Garuda Indonesia has greatly shrunk and focuses on a very limited number of international destinations. (Vietnam Airlines does fly from Ho Chi Minh City to Jakarta, though.)

Korean and Taiwanese visitors galore — and the odd Qatari

Just before security stood one of those very low-profile souvenir shops, the likes of which dot the international terminal of Chennai, my (terrible) former Indian home airport. Fortunately, unlike Chennai, Hanoi had much better shops in store: while nowhere close to a Suvarnabhumi or even a Soekarno–Hatta, they more than served the purpose well.

Immigration and security were painless, and took up hardly any time, with an Indian family — first a bespectacled teenage girl and then the rest, including a younger boy — in front of me. I had the pleasure of witnessing my own A350, 9V-SHV, land right before my eyes, with A321neos of Cathay Pacific and Korean Air keeping the gates company. The thrill!

There was a decent DFS duty-free, with Kiehl’s’ trademark skeleton ‘Mr. Bones’ standing at the entrance, and a big-ass ‘Let the Party Begin’ sign placed both inside and outside the store.

With the inbound SQ192 having landed, I had a look at the upcoming flights at the neighbouring gates — many of them to Taiwan and South Korea, but nothing to Japan. The sole longhaul departure was on Turkish Airlines to Istanbul.

The duty-free had some sort of tie-up with China Southern Airlines, providing passengers a rebate of up to US$40, but why it was reserved for this particular airline I don’t know. (For what it’s worth, China Southern makes a couple of appearances further down, and for totally different reasons!)

9V-SHV pulled up at Gate 29, and a few people had already started to line up for boarding as she came to rest next to VN-A685, a sharkletted VietJetAir A321ceo. My gosh, all the birds in this collage look sexy: my SQ A350, the VN 787-9 right behind on the runway — even the KE A321neo, much as I have no love lost for the ancient sky-blue livery.

Certainly, now, at noon, was a good time to catch as many non-VN-registered aircraft as possible, and most of them had either B- (Mainland Chinese/Hongkongese/Taiwanese) or HL (South Korean) registrations, making my 9V one of a rare few. Plenty of A321neos abounded: Cathay Pacific, Korean Air, Starlux to name a few, accompanied by a China Airlines A330-300 (those planes are OLD) and China Southern 737 MAX 8.

(For an Indian contrast: good luck catching non-VT-registered planes at Bengaluru, or indeed most Indian airports, during daylight hours — or at any time before eleven at night…)

On this side of the windows were escalators to two premium lounges, the NASCO Lounge and the Song Hong Premium Lounge and Bar — and in between them a cutout of a Vietnam Airlines girl in a yellow tunic holding a bunch of pink (not golden!) lotuses, and a list of SkyTeam members with Aeroflot and China Southern unceremoniously blackened out.

After hanging around a much better-looking souvenir shop, I headed further down the terminal on the travellators.

Many shops were rather modest, but I did appreciate the presence of a Popeyes gà rán (fried chicken) store and a Starbucks amid all the local shops — one of them being a ‘Star Café’ that had once been a Burger King.

A Qatar 787-9 (A7-BHG) had just landed as QR976… oh, just two digits away from 974, the international calling code for Qatar! (That flight number’s used for Ho Chi Minh City.)

Closer by, an A321 of the very obscure Vietravel Airlines (VN-A278), in the livery for the NovaWorld resort chain, was approaching the gate. Meanwhile VN-A596, Bamboo Airways’ only remaining A320neo, which features the ‘Fly Green’ livery, touched down moments after the Qatar 787. This was turning out to be a great day for planespotting!

Of course I had to buy a bunch of souvenirs for all my colleagues, and so headed to one of those typical handicraft shops — which, as it turns out, had die-cast aircraft models!!!

Without another word, I laid my hands greedily on the Qatar Airways 777-300ER in FIFA World Cup 2022 livery, and also a Vietnam Airlines A330-200 with the gold much more brighter yellow than it should have been. More pictures of these at the very end — this is hardly the most flattering ambience!

Another head-turner of a plane now drew close by: VN-A814, one of seven A330-300s at VietJetAir — something I’d tried to catch but missed by a mile — and one of four with a special livery, in my opinion the prettiest of the lot. The ‘Vietnam: Timeless Charm’ sticker on this one looks much more charming than the Petrolimex sticker on sister-ships VN-A810/A811, and the Coca-Cola Real Magic ad on VN-A812.

The Qatar 787, the Bamboo A320neo and all the other aircraft that’d landed more than played their part in depleting my phone battery! Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch the most exotic one of them all: the IrAero Sukhoi Superjet 100 (RA-89078) as IO893 from Irkutsk. BOOHOO! ;(

Delays, and more Korean and Taiwanese visitors — and an Emirati

It was from the Popeyes that I got my meal and drink… but the prices were in USD — something I’ve only seen in Colombo before. Still, a great alternative to the standard McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King!

Another colourful aircraft — but devoid of titles — added itself to the mix: VN-A356, a Vietnam Airlines A321 landing from Dong Hoi (VDH) in the centre of the country. This was briefly leased to Cambodia Angkor Air (code: K6) in 2019–20 (XU-357) and still wore its purple colours — so much so that I’d mistaken it for a K6 plane! Indeed, VN has had a longstanding arrangement with the small flag carrier of the neighbouring kingdom, having leased several A320/1s and ATR 72s to it previously.

For the record, XU-350 is the sole A321 of Cambodia Angkor Air, and is indeed the spitting image of VN-A356. And in June 2024 K6 started flights to Delhi, an interesting move given its tiny fleet. Much as travel to Vietnam has exploded among Indians, Cambodia and Laos remain more or less out of the picture — but IndiGo should be launching flights to the famous temple city of Siem Reap, home to the Angkor Wat, in the coming months.

More Taiwanese and Korean planes ahoy: a China Airlines A330-300 and Starulx A321neo were departing for the small island country (TPE) — in addition to an EVA 777-300ER landing, which I couldn’t catch, as BR397 — and an Asiana 777-200ER arrived from the airport on an artificial island (ICN) from a non-island country.

It was now announced that boarding for SQ191 had been delayed from 12:30 to 1:00, and a bespectacled young woman in a blue tunic held the following very detailed, handwritten sign.

SINGAPORE TRAFFIC AIR CONTROL REQUEST SQ191 DEPARTS AT 13:00

Which is much more than many airlines, especially in the US, provide for delayed flights. I appreciated the gesture, which meant that I had more time to munch on my Popeyes burger, while my eyes feasted on an ancient Asiana 777-200ER (HL7700) land as OZ729. This soon parked next to countryman Korean Air’s A321neo, giving rise to a mismatch of an old aircraft and a newer livery, and vice-versa!

Yes, I’d wanted to fly on a big trip involving Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese airlines in June 2024, but… none of these countries are kind to the Indian passport, and require a mountain of paperwork, including Certificates of Employment and of Financial Support, to enter. (All while the Singapore passport has become the strongest in the world…) So I had to scrap the plan, and flew to Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur — including a KLM 787-9 between those two cities — instead.

Anyway, les frères coréenes were standing next to each other, and it’s one of the few times where I actually found the KE livery to look slightly nice — and the minty-fresh A321neo certainly helped!

As HBO Asia played on the nearby Samsung Neo QLED 8K TV — I don’t know how far airports go with all these branding partnerships — an Emirates 777-300ER, A6-ENB, landed as EK394 from Dubai to join the fellow Middle Eastern aircraft with the grey body and maroon oryx at the gate.

There were comparatively few Mainland Chinese aircraft, barring the China Southern 737 MAX 8 as I posted above, and an A320 (B-8078) of Shenzhen Airlines now arrived to make up for this deficit. 

And then, all of a sudden, boarding was announced for SQ191, and I jetted down the jetbridge with Star Alliance partner Shenzhen Airlines’ A320 for company. As is the norm for SQ, they place a box of reusable earphones outside the entrance to the plane.

The sensation of boarding an SQ A350 never gets old, eh? All the other exotic airlines come and go, but this is the one that would take me home, for the first flight of 45²-1, or 46×44!

The flight: Boarding and departure

Flight: Singapore Airlines SQ191/SIA191
Date: Tuesday, 2 January 2024
Route: Hanoi Noibai (VVNB/HAN) to Singapore Changi (WSSS/SIN)
Aircraft: 9V-SHV, Airbus A350-900 (regional configuration)
Age: 2 years 10 months at the time (built: 2 March 2021, delivered: 31 March 2021)
Seat: 46B (port side, near window)
Boarding: 12:40pm Indochina Time (ICT), GMT +7 (1:40pm SGT, GMT +8)
Departure: 1:15pm ICT (2:15pm SGT)
Arrival: 5:15pm SGT (4:15pm ICT)
Duration: 3 hours

Notes:
• Fifth flight on the SQ A350, the first being 9V-SMF — the 10,000th Airbus aircraft ever built — in October 2022, and the others all being on the A350 Regional in the 9V-SH* series, with another coming the following month: SQ421 from BOM (9V-SHL) in February 2024.
• A rare flight taking place exclusively in the afternoon hours, while being longer than the typical one-hour hops within Southern India or from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur/Jakarta. The 3-hour flight duration between Singapore and Hanoi is the reason for this — longer than KUL/CGK/BKK but shorter than India — and indeed it would’ve landed at Changi sooner if not for the delay.

Where the towels are hotter than the girls

This being a standard-issue regional A350, there was no question of Premium Economy. 9V-SHV was the third-last A350 MH (medium-haul configuration) to be delivered to SQ, with 9V-SHW and SHY being the final two. (SQ always skips the letter X in its aircraft registrations, a superstition it’s always stayed true to, and 9V-SHZ does not exist either.)

Now, I’ve consistently found that SQ decks up its aircraft with Christmassy decorations at this time of year, and now was no exception. I wasn’t able to assign myself a seat at booking, so I was given 46B: a middle almost near the window, which was good enough for me!

In due course, Chomchanok S. from Thailand handed me a piping-hot towel, which I used (after picking at the searing heat for a bit) to damp my hands and face. Remember, SQ was the only airline on this trip without an inflight magazine — Vistara, Cathay, VietJetAir and Vietnam Airlines all did (and VN even had two) — and the loss stung all the more, even though the KrisShop magazine was there to ever-so-slightly make up for it.

Before long, the iconic Singapore Airlines safety video started (with Vietnamese plus English subtitles) — an oasis of tranquil and calm and serenity unto itself — and once again I kept a lookout for the littlest passenger of all. If you ask me, he is the baby superstar of the SQ safety video: I will never forget his toothless smile, eyes filled with wonder.

As the video continued, another young passenger — she’s a pretty cute one, too, with those melting eyes like a puppy’s — came into the fore with her impossibly handsome daddy. He must have done something good in his previous life to get a wife and daughter like that! (There’s another kid around that age in the video, painting and pointing at the emergency exits, but I could not grab him this time.)

The video concluded, as always, with the opera-like violin and sweeping panoramas of the Gardens by the Bay. Southeast Asia seldom gets more ‘World Class’ (to borrow from SQ’s recent ad campaign) than this! The only thing I found missing was the otherwise unmissable ‘A Star Alliance member’ logotype, which AI, ET and TG (those members I’ve flown) all have in their videos…

A young Indian man about the same age as me was seated by the window, and he lost no opportunity to put the DSLR camera he was holding to good use, starting with the Shenzhen Airlines A320 next door. We pulled out of the gate, while I tried to pair the KrisWorld IFE to the SingaporeAir app on my phone, with the pairing code being a palindromic H77H.

The KrisWorld system swished (far from sputtered) to life, with all those yellow-pop-ups acting as navigation guides, before revealing the latest and greatest selections of the Christmas/New Year season — but, as on the CX A321neo the previous week, I looked no further than Barbie. (No, no Bollywood this time around: I’d learnt my lesson from the atrociously bad Pathaan, which I’d chosen on the first leg of this trip — the SQ A380 to Mumbai — and regretted it deeply.)

I looked up my plane on Flightradar24 as it appeared on the map. Uncannily, there was a JAL A350 positioned right behind in the featured picture… Little did I know that a JAL A350 — JA13XJ — would make global headlines that very same evening, sacrificing her own existence and burning to ashes, but saving every human life on board. (I say ‘human’ because, sadly, a dog and a cat perished in the resultant fire.)

Indeed, JAL continued to make headlines throughout the first few weeks of 2024 for both this unfortunate reason and a much more heartening one: the début of its new A350-1000 with a groundbreaking first-class product, one that firmly placed the Oneworld member airline on par with Emirates for the world’s best first class.

(Interestingly, the world’s best business class is also a tie between a Japanese and a Gulf airline: All Nippon Airways’ THE Room, with its unbelievable real estate, and Qatar Airways’ much more famous and widespread Qsuite — which at the Farnborough Airshow in July 2024 revealed a cosmetic upgrade, Qsuite Next Gen, that will début on the 777X in 2025–6.)

Meanwhile, my dad has this habit of constantly asking the details of every flight that I take, which I find vexing. Shotti! (Really!) my mom had replied upthread (not shown here). However, on this occasion he was in no mood for my snapping tone, as he was busy at work, so I had to give the flight number. What to do?

After all the taxiing and turning and twisting on the runway, 9V-SHV finally lifted me up into the cloudy afternoon sky and out of Vietnam, headed towards the ships of Changi. A lovely country packed with surprises at every turn, blending modern urban life with quaint landscapes and frequent haunts, which indeed deserves all the Indian tourist traffic that it’s getting. Needless to say, it won’t be very long before I return to this country where I started 2024, never mind if only for a few hours!

Wi-Fi, menu, catering — and all the Barbie pinkness

It was now time to fire up the Thales 3DMaps application, and while not as feature-rich as Panasonic’s Arc (seen on the Vistara A321neo and Air India A350) — or Cathay Pacific’s magnificent A350 and A321neo moving maps — it was still a treat to watch my A350 going down the length of Vietnam. Added bonus: the registration in the top corner!

It was clear that several others in surrounding seats were enjoying Barbie as well, which would account for most of the merriment on this ‘last AND the least’ flight of the trip, or the first of the year. And why wouldn’t they, since Barbie was actually banned in Vietnam itself, owing to a map dispute?

As much as I love to fly diverse carriers to check out their onboard products, one thing I always look forward to when ‘returning’ to SQ is its unmatched free-for-all Wi-Fi offering, provided absolutely free of cost to anyone with a KrisFlyer account. The only catch being that it isn’t available when overflying India on certain aircraft — A350 Medium Hauls like this one, A380s and older 777-300ERs — with their SITA OnAir Wi-Fi, but that obviously wasn’t an issue on this sector as it was on the A380 to Mumbai ten days before.

As the banner with an animated two-kid family of SQ passengers shows, the main draw of KrisWorld is the sheer breadth and depth of entertainment for all ages — but I wouldn’t be going there right away. Instead I headed straight to Flightradar24, which I love to do when airborne: on SQ every time, on other airlines depending on whether there’s Wi-Fi, and, if so, how cheap it is!

Some of the more interesting planes in the vicinity included XU-350, Cambodia Angkor Air’s sole A321 — as I mentioned before when its spitting image, VN-A356, was landing at Hanoi — returning to Phnom Penh as K6669 from Guangzhou, and HS-TEN, one of only three A330-300s (alongside HS-TEO/TEP) which Thai Airways brought back to service after COVID, which all fly predominantly to Japan.

You can also see all the other 9V-SH* planes in the air, including SQ177 from Ho Chi Minh City, which is about half the duration of this flight from Hanoi.

Now I headed to the KrisWorld IFE, and it was THEN that I stumbled upon something I’d never seen before: a detailed onboard menu! I believe this was introduced only recently, as I hadn’t seen it on any of my other SQ flights, including the A380 to Mumbai ten days before. In fact, I think this is only available on the 9V-SH* series of regional A350s with their Thales IFE, as other SQ aircraft with their Panasonic IFE provide only a QR code to scan.

This onscreen menu was also present on my afternoon-to-evening flight from Mumbai (SQ421) the following month on a similar A350 (9V-SHL) — though it was a different matter that they ran out of the Indian chicken option and took ages to serve the back of the bus, much to the chagrin of many (some even complained angrily)…

The only other airline where I’ve seen any sort of menu within the IFE is SriLankan on its A330-300 in November 2023, but there it was a highly simplistic affair with just a small number of names, not the elaborate presentation of SQ. And of course SQ had to proclaim its bubbly selection as the highest-rated of any airline out there — as all the vinologists agree!

Here, then, is the ‘Designed to Delight You’ onscreen menu in all its Proxima-Nova-ified glory, a fitting cover image for this report. The packaging, sadly, with all its uncomfortable eco-washing, was a different matter…

All this done, I turned to the movie itself: the highest-grosser of 2023, with Margot Robbie (an Australian) and Ryan Gosling (a Canadian — it’s always fun to point out global origins) as its leads. It’s not often that, on a superhero-loving planet, an explicitly female, feminine movie sets box-office registers to the tune of $1.5 billion… methinks because it wasn’t so much female as it was feminist! As far as I’m concerned, the more feminist comedies with their gentle touch of smash-the-patriarchy sarcasm, the better.

There was just the one luxury Swiss watchmaker ad (Hublot) to kick off the proceedings — my previous Mumbai A380 flight had Patek Philippe, H. Moser & Cie. AND Jaeger-LeCoutre — and then Standard Chartered’s Here for Good campaign took over the screen.

Regardless of whether or not you like feminism in cinema, you’re invited to read my review of the Vistara A321neo from March 2023 — Singapore to Mumbai, the same route as the A380 in December — wherein I commended a Bollywood feminist sports drama — Chak De! India (2007) — for being so much ahead of its time.

I’m happy to report that the Standard Chartered ad was feminist enough in my book, showing girls play football in India and Africa, and women holding positions of power and celebrating with their young daughters. As a man — and, hopefully, feminist — who wants nothing but a fairer, more equitable world, that elicited a YAY! from me.

I’m afraid the next ad was nowhere as feminist, and much more feminine: some generic luxury spa beauty product. I can’t say I have my sympathies for such perpetuations of feminine beauty stereotypes.

With two rather outdated-looking disclaimers out of the way, I jumped right back to where I’d left off the previous week (and year) on the Cathay Pacific A321neo (with a 4K display!!!). The scene where Sasha, the angry teenage girl (played by Ariana Greenblatt) and her coterie of high-school gal pals rip Barbie to shreds for perpetuating feminist sterotypes — Sasha even calls Barbie a ‘fascist’ — instead of being the feminist icon that she believes herself to be.

It was when Gloria (played by the redoubtable America Ferrera) — she of the ‘It is literally impossible to be a woman’ monologue — was doodling Irrepressible Thoughts of Death Barbie and Full Body Cellulite Barbie that the meal du jour was rolled out.

I’m afraid this A350, despite being one of SQ’s youngest A350s, did not have the crispy 4K clarity that the CX A321neo to Hanoi did the next week — indeed, the subtitles here are all jagged, and the quality of the subtitles looked like 480p at best… Another area where SQ has a bit of catching up to do with Hong Kong’s flag carrier.

I’ve never been a fan of the square paper boxes SQ rolls out on ASEAN flights, even less so of the awfully uncomfortable and shallow bamboo cutlery that’s passed around in the name of sustainability. At least the lunch option — salted fish fried rice with chicken (no vegetarian option, sorry: this wasn’t the Indian-friendly VietJetAir) — was just about passable, but the dessert, an ondeh-ondeh cake, was the real highlight. Along with the serving of orange juice — my default Sprite wasn’t there, I believe — this saved the meal from lurching into the disastrous food on Flight 714 to Bangkok in December 2022.

That said, you’ll get MUCH better catering on SQ’s Indian flights than these ASEAN ones, though we can all agree that there’s absolutely no need for the boring milk-in-a-stick (which only SQ seems to give) and dry bread roll and Lurpak butter on a lunch service like this. Instead, why not serve the ‘croffles’ (chocolate waffles) that Garuda Indonesia did on my flight from Denpasar to Jakarta?

Before I resumed Barbie transmission, I had to make one note regarding airlines’ typography, the branding-obsessed nerd that I am. TL;DR: Service-wise (as per OMAAT), CX okay, EVA superb, SQ flawless; font-wise (as per my very humble opinion), CX outstandingly brilliant — like many other Oneworld airlines — SQ great-but-not-CX, EVA horrible.

Typography-wise, it’s a heaven-and-hell contrast between the eCXeptionalism that is Cathay Pacific and the shameful atrociousness of other Sinophone airlines, no matter how award-winning (like EVA Air) they may be. Only Starlux puts in a little bit of effort, but even then it’s mostly Google Fonts… (I do hope JX joins CX in Oneworld, though, as the alliance has never had any Chinese-speaking member besides CX.)

Anyway, back to Barbie after the meal, which was okay but could’ve been better — the opposite of the A380 to Mumbai, where the movie was horrible and the meal outstanding!

Childhood memories of Sasha and her mom playing with dolls come back to haunt the teenager, who can’t believe that her mother is actually ‘shining’ with a personification of an ideal (White?) woman.

We can all agree with Barbie that the real world is forever and irrevocably messed up<unquote>, and with this gem:</unquote>

Everyone hates women. Women hate women. Men hate women. It’s the one thing we can agree on. — Sasha, wise beyond her years

Girls not only wanna have fun, they NEED to, all the more so because a man isn’t holding them back.

There’s a few more montages in the Tourism Bonus, basically my dump for whatever movie scenes I loved and kept snapping away at, regardless of what the co-passengers felt — as long as I wasn’t intruding on their privacy, that is!

Cruising cartography, cameos, closing credits, Cambodians

We were now about halfway into the flight, nearing Ho Chi Minh City in the south of Vietnam, and these were some of the neighbours I found interesting, as the ever-informative Flightradar24 illustrated. Among them an SQ 737 MAX (9V-MBF) flying as SQ166 to Siem Reap, the premier tourist hotspot of Cambodia, and a Cambodia Airways sharkletted A320 (XU-762) as KR9756 from Singapore to Sanya (SYX) in China’s Hainan island… WHAT?! (From there, it returns to its origin of Phnom Penh.)

Resuming regular movie transmission. And now for the iconic, divisive and generating-a-million-hot-takes ‘It is literally impossible to be a woman’ monologue… Read it. JUST READ IT. That’s an order.

Read even more, or, if you will, let your eyes go agog at the costumiers’ and set designers’ creations. And hence began the process of reclaiming the land of Barbie from the Kens and their kin. I love it!

A bit more into the flight, and I spied the 737 MAX (9V-MBG) flying in the opposite direction as us on SQ194, which would reach Hanoi about an hour after my A350 landed at Changi — but at roughly the same local time.

Interestingly, almost all destinations in the SQ1xx series were airborne, across Malaysia (KUL, PEN), Cambodia (PNH, SAI) and Vietnam (DAD, SGN, HAN) — but not Brunei (BWN), which had already landed! (For the record, Thailand and Myanmar use the SQ7xx series; the Philippines and Indonesia use the SQ9xx series. These three series — SQ1xx, 7xx and 9xx — are the only ones without overnight flights!)

By now I’d reached the conclusion of the movie, by which time Barbie had been transformed into a real woman, ‘answering to the name of “Handler, comma, Barbara”’ — rather than the Barbara Millicent Roberts that I’d expected to see.

And for details of how that transformation happened, you’re invited to see Appendix B in the Tourism Bonus at the end of the report. (No, don’t refuse this invitation, not when it comes from Ruth Handler — ‘I am Mattel’ — herself…)

In fact, the last dialogue of the movie — ‘I’m here to see my gynaecologist’ — apparently caused a huge uptick in searches for gynaecologists, according to a recent study published in July 2024!

The culturally smart and provocative movie finished with a number of Barbie-and-Her-Friends dolls from ages past accompanying the closing credits, from Christie to Midge to Allan to Tanner, the pooping(!) dog.

Some 45 minutes later, I was finally out of Vietnam and on the home stretch, flying close to the Malaysian island of Redang (RDN) — whose airport, astonishingly enough, has a twice-weekly direct flight to Singapore’s Seletar (XSP) airport operated by Berjaya Air using the ATR 42!

(It’s the only operator of commercial flights at XSP other than Malaysia Airlines’ regional subsidiary Firefly, which has several daily ATR 72 flights to Kuala Lumpur’s smaller, closer Subang (SZB) airport. For 25 years SZB has had had only turboprops and private jets, but in August 2024 it will finally accept A320s and 737s again, and Scoot starts flights on 1 September.)

Which meant it was finally time to pull out my Viettel 4G LTE SIM card: I’d barely interacted with the company — the largest telco in the country, owned by the military — after inserting it on arrival at Hanoi a week earlier. In went my usual Singtel SIM, and I always like to keep a few drawing-board pins handy for such ‘SIM card exchanges’.

Ah, how good it feels to see the ships of Changi again…

Around 5pm Singapore time, an hour ahead of Hanoi, the onward connections were displayed as well as a warning not to charge any devices. This was a sign that Changi — and hence the end of this 11-day-long traipsing — was nigh!

Having steered clear of Bollywood throughout the flight, I had a brief glance at the smaller Indian movies on offer, including in South Indian languages.

We were just minutes away from landing now, with a number of Aussies and Kiwis on short final, and SQ’s soft landing music had started to play, which can also be found on Spotify.

As the A350 swooped lower, not only I but also my window seatmate took the opportunity to snap at the ships and the approaching landmarks — me with my iPhone, he with his DSLR camera — including the Marina Bay Sands and the Merlion, everything that is Singapore-for-tourists. And then the East Coast Park by the seaside, located next door to my home on Marine Parade Road.

Kissing the ground at 5:15, exactly three hours after departure, 9V-SHV coasted past the hangar of DHL and FedEx planes — now also including, astonishingly enough, a Delta jet — and down the runway, while KrisWorld, as always, showed a reminder for passengers to not forget their belongings on board. (Which, this time, is exactly what I ended doing! Details below.)

As always, the cabin crew’s landing announcement contained those special words, which never fail to swell my heart with pride:

…and to all Singaporeans and residents of Singapore, a warm welcome home.

We passed by Terminal 1, which I like to nickname Terminal One(world) because most members of that alliance at Changi use this terminal. However, now it had much more members from outside the blue-circle group — a TK 777-300ER, an EK A380, a KLM 777-300ER — than within it, with a Qantas A330-200 being the only one visible.

Just above me, an AirAsia A320 (9M-AQM) in a special livery for De’Xandra fragrances (last row, above) was taking off. I’ve encountered this unique bird before, all the more unique because the registration, instead of the usual back of the plane, is at the centre of the fuselage!

We pulled up to Terminal 3, instead of Terminal 2 — from where all ASEAN flights (like this one), Japanese and Korean flights, and non-Indian flights to South Asia (i.e., KTM/DAC/CMB/MLE) take off — and pulled up next door to a company A380, while a CX A350 (B-LRX as CX734) soared above and ahead.

I made an orderly disembarkation from the A350 after taking almost all my belongings from the overhead bins… almost. I would be back on the plane in ten minutes’ time after a brief chat with airport security!

While taking out a small, pale lavender-coloured suitcase I’d brought the previous day from the Lotte Mart hypermarket in the gigantic Lotte Mall West Lake, it bumped on me. With the seats having mostly emptied, flight attendant Sherry Choo was mostly arranging items, but the bump caused her to say: ‘Oh, are you okay, Sir? Are you all well?’ I allayed her concerns and once again appreciated the pitch-perfectness of SQ’s cabin crew training.

No sooner had I entered the Terminal 3 gate than it struck me that I’d forgotten something on board! Specifically, the Vietnam Airlines model A330-200 that I’d bought from Hanoi airport earlier in the day, which had somehow got left behind in one of the overhead bins. I had to shamefacedly explain the situation to the ground staff in the terminal, who allowed me back on board 9V-SHV — where the IFE screens at each seat were reloading their content for the next flight — and then I grabbed my bag and headed out. This time, I did not forget to say thank you to the cabin crew who’ve made SQ the ‘Welcome to World Class’ airline that it is!

Homecoming to Changi — as an emergency unfolds at Haneda…

With me finally out of the A350, I took a moment to look at all the neighbouring planes, among them a 787-9 (ZK-NZQ) of alliance partner Air New Zealand. Interestingly, SQ and NZ have very similar flight numbers on the Singapore–Auckland route: NZ281/282, NZ283/284, SQ285/286!

‘An eminently forgettable flight — as it should be!’ I wrote.

Speaking of NZ283, a sign was placed outside the arrival gate for a passenger connecting to the said flight to Auckland from my flight, SQ191. I turned towards the arrival/immigration area — Changi does not separate arriving and departing passengers, unlike many other major airports — as another Qantas A330-200 touched down.

A Cathay Pacific A350 here, sunning her wings; a Vietnam Airlines A321 (sharkletted but in the old livery) there, and I was at the entryway to the Skytrain — but did not take it. This being early in the evening, the view at Changi was calm and picturesque — which was more than could be said for what was happening right now at Tokyo Haneda Airport…

At length I arrived at the point where Terminal 3 begins for most travellers, with a Bacha Coffee on one side and an arch with Chanel ads on the other. As you’d expect, I proceeded down to Immigration, instead of strolling around the shops further.

At the beginning of the cavernous hall, people were filling up their SG Arrival Cards — which Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) requires for all arriving passengers, citizens or otherwise — either on their own phones or amongst the row of iPads placed there, with seating catered for. As I’d written — see above (where I had to retrieve the plane model from the aircraft) — ‘When will this SG Arrival Card stupidity stop?’ It’s been long overdue for this one.

Soon enough, having filled in my details at the nearest iPad, I was through Immigration and proceeded to the Lotte Duty Free nearby. Luggage for SQ191 from Hanoi was being delivered alongside SQ637 from Tokyo Narita: a city (if not the exact airport) that was currently in a state of emergency I was blissfully unaware of…

On to the Jewel Changi — and the JAL crash-fire

With my one suitcase plus a ton of side bags in tow, I proceeded to the lifts to take me up to the departure level, from where I turned right into the glassy walkway that led to that extravagant shoppers’ paradise — though probably not as much as the Lotte Mall West Lake the previous day (shocking as it may sound!): the Jewel Changi. I took in the calm, serene evening glow, with people milling about the travellators at this most highly regarded and awarded aviation hub in the world (outside Qatar, that is!).

I dragged my belongings up to Level 3, and eventually chanced upon a (South) Indian restaurant named Sankranti, where I decided to have dinner. After a week-plus of eating on the cheap in INR and VND, the costliness of SGD — now with 9% GST, up from 8% — would be a bitter pill to swallow. But the majestic surrounds and sky-garden views were probably worth the increasing price being paid!

Here I ordered a standard-issue chicken biryani with curry and raita (onions in sweet curd), which I quite enjoyed — expensive(ish) though it was — much more than the meal onboard! It’s pictured alongside my iPad with a list of aircraft registrations, with the Japanese ones being shown here for very good reason… (Full resolution.)

It was here that I finally got to know of the HUMONGOUS disaster at Tokyo Haneda Airport, which on the one hand was a tragedy, but on the other hand was a MIRACLE of the highest order, with no (human) fatalities on the A350 — only US Airways 1549 came close! For those who need a reminder of what happened: 

A Japan Airlines A350-900 (JA13XJ), landing as JL516 from Sapporo (Chitose), had collided with a De Havilland Canada DHC-8-300 (JA722A) of the Japan Coast Guard, charring them both to ashes. All 379 people on board the JAL A350 escaped, with minor injuries at most — taking great care to leave all their belongings on board — but sadly five out of six people on the Coast Guard Q300 perished, with only the captain escaping with his life. (A dog and a cat on the JAL A350 unfortunately lost their lives as well.)

Even worse, the Coast Guard plane was carrying relief supplies for the earthquake-affected region of Noto, which was badly hit on New Year’s Day. Nevertheless, global and universal acclaim was accorded to both JAL for its cabin crew and no-nonsense safety video — particularly the part where items were to be left onboard, and high heels were not to be used on plane slides — and the Japanese people in general for being so law-abiding and following safety instructions down to the letter. In any other part of the world, including the US, we might not have had such a miracle.

As the story was updated, it later emerged that only the captain of the Coast Guard plane had survived. I had a glance at all the flights into HND, Tokyo’s premium city airport, which were of course overwhelmingly domestic — though with a few international routes from both ANA/JAL and foreign airlines (including Virgin Australia’s 737 MAX from Cairns!) — and were all now cancelled.

Ultimately, hundreds of lives had been saved, even though a few (two pets among them) were tragically lost, and that is what mattered the most at the end of the day. With this feeling of gratitude, I headed out of the luxurious Jewel Changi — though I now felt that NOTHING in Asia, not even THIS marvellous spectacle of a mall, could hold a candle to the Lotte Mall West Lake — and into the taxi ranks below Terminal 1, grateful that my seven-flight five-airline India/Hong Kong/Vietnam trip to end 2023 and kick off 2024 had concluded with spectacular success.

A silver Hyundai Ioniq liftback — which I quite like, unlike the hideous redesign of the Toyota Prius, which moved the registration plate to the bottom bumper (like the Ioniq) — now turned up, and I loaded my luggage into it. The entertainment screen was inexplicably fixated on the Hyundai logo, except when the rear camera was activated!

As I like to say, the car ‘shot out into the night’, past the Crowne Plaza, past the Welcome to Singapore sign, past… what looked like a Royal Air Maroc plane with the swoosh and star. What was the only African member of Oneworld doing here?!?! Flightradar24 was no help either, as it didn’t show any CN-registered aircraft as having arrived.

In barely 15 minutes, I was home, for the first time in 2024: eleven days after I’d left on a cool Saturday evening, bound for Mumbai on an A380. I put down all my stuff, freshened up — there was thankfully nobody else at home – and took stock of my spoils and treasures from the trip, across SQ, CX, Vistara, VietJetAir and Vietnam Airlines.

Suffice it to say that SQ excelled in many aspects, but underperformed in a few others, most notably the lack of an inflight magazine. The catering on this flight wasn’t all that impressive, either, if I’m being honest, from the so-called ‘sustainable’ box + cutlery to the dish itself. I wrote (though I certainly didn’t mean to rag on SQ otherwise, excellent as it otherwise is):

Other airlines on this trip (UK, CX, VJ, VN): big bowls, branded wipes, Nice, big inflight magazines.
‘Welcome to World Class’ SQ: pseudo-eco-sustainable boxes, unusable wooden cutlery and off-the-shelf Walch wipes. And NO inflight magazine.

And then came the boarding passes, with the winner being Vistara hands down for its pretty purple pass. VJ was at least mildly interesting for being printed on a bill-like receipt, and VN was big and bold with its branding, but SQ and CX both disappointed, being printed on ‘plane’ paper with no colours whatsoever!

All that aside, I took out the Vietnam Airlines and Qatar Airways model planes and placed them on my table, and then against the ceiling fan-cum-light. I was so proud of having got something memorable from Vietnam — though not just these model planes, or the inflight magazines. (Again I ragged on SQ for not allowing SilverKris to have a postpandemic comeback.)

I’m referring to the DIY magnet (last row, right) that I’d made the previous evening at the Lotte Mall West Lake, with a cute, smiling girl and guy, the text ‘Xin chao! The adventure begins‘ and the backdrop of a Vietnam Airlines plane against the sky. This photo is from after I’d just finished making it at the arts-and-crafts store-cum-workshop.

My journal entry for the day was rather simplistic in terms of colours, devoid of the typical purple/pink/orange highlighters and sticking to ‘just’ blue and pink pens.

To conclude the day and the trip, I had a look at my adventures over the past few days in Vietnam on Google Maps, and shared the new model planes’ pictures with my mom. She said (last picture): ‘Beautiful flying machines. Who is sitting inside there?’ (Referring to yours truly, of course!)