Review of Singapore Airlines flight from Mumbai to Singapore in Economy

NOTE: The last few pictures and conclusion were somehow left incomplete at the time of publication, as the draft hadn’t been saved correctly. They have now been updated.

The perfect protégé (AI) and the misfiring mentor (SQ): two A350s in succession

After a four-day Bengaluru family trip in February 2024, including an ‘AIX-citing’ experience on the new Air India Express’ A320 from Delhi, it was time to head back to Singapore in some style on Sunday the 25th, on a pair of A350s. First came Air India’s spanking-new A350 from Bengaluru to Mumbai in Premium Economy — whose brief review I published on the special date of 29 February, just days after the flight, with a full one to follow — followed by another A350, my sixth thus far on the airline which will be taking a stake in AI after the Vistara merger* is completed: Singapore Airlines. (In August 2024, also on Sunday the 25th, I flew a seventh SQ A350 from Bangkok — only a day after a Thai Airways A350 to BKK — with SQ and TG singlehandedly contributing to making this my most-flown widebody aircraft!)

*On 30 August 2024, Vistara announced that it will cease operations on 12 November 2024 — just a bit short of a decade (it was launched on 9 January 2015) — and all flights will use the Air India code and callsign from that date.

While the AI A350 (VT-JRB) had all sorts of bells and whistles like a tail camera, and a Premium Economy cabin (which I sat in) — that jet was originally intended for Aeroflot Russian Airlines and had a bit of a blue-and-orange interior theme — this one (9V-SHL) was a more ordinary one, with a higher-density two-cabin layout, and the most common type of A350 I’ve flown. (The only time I flew an SQ A350 outside the 9V-SH* series of Medium Haul, or Regional, A350s was also my first, back in October 2022 — and a one-in-10,000 special aircraft: 9V-SMF, the 10,000th Airbus aircraft ever built.)

It was all the more natural that I fly it from Mumbai, having flown the A380 to Mumbai, since BOM remains the best Indian city for flights to Singapore, between SQ’s A380 and this A350 Regional — in fact it’s the only Indian city to also get the SQ A350 Longhaul (9V-SM*/SJ*) on the 2x-weekly SQ425/426 — plus the class-leading Vistara A321neo. Even Air India and IndiGo’s spartan, no-frills A320neos depart Mumbai during the afternoon and reach in the evening, in contrast to many other Indian cities which have only merciless redeyes to Singapore.

Having now flown the SQ A350 a seventh time — the latest being 9V-SHS on SQ705 from BKK on 25 August — with all except 9V-SMF being in the 9V-SH* series of regional A350s, I know only too well how the cabins are like, with grey-and-blue seats and a different IFE system by Thales compared to the Panasonic IFE on the rest of the SQ fleet. Indeed, only a month before this flight on 9V-SHL, I’d also flown sister-ship 9V-SHV as SQ191 from Hanoi at the start of 2024 to conclude my grand India/Hong Kong/Vietnam Christmas 2023/New Year 2024 trip. Those were all perfectly pleasant, unremarkable A350 flights — including two more to and from Bengaluru in June/July 2023 — but this noon-to-dusk A350 flight from Mumbai was by far the longest, and the most eventful — in fact, a comedy of errors!

The meal service at the back of the bus was so delayed and protracted, and some passengers so angry, that the cabin crew had to apologise profusely for the not-quite-Singapore Airlines experience. This was completely an inversion of my first-ever A380 flight — in the opposite direction (SIN–BOM), two months before, on the eve of Christmas Eve — which was about as perfect as SQ could get in an Economy flight to India. By the end of the flight, many passengers threatened to complain against the hapless SQ crew, hungry and angry, despite the charms of the KrisWorld IFE that are so far unheard of on an Indian carrier other than the soon-to-be-gone Vistara’s A321neo.

So much so that one ignorant passenger on this flight even muttered how IndiGo had never short-changed him the way SQ did now. Little did he appreciate the night-and-day difference between 6E’s underpadded seats, measly snacks and no entertainment or power — at least until its ‘IndiGo Stretch’ business class débuts in November 2024 — and the ‘Welcome to World Class’ experience that is SQ on a good day!

Note: I’m publishing these reports out of chronological order: with the Air India Express (ex-AirAsia India) A320 review published first, this Singapore Airlines A350 report from Mumbai is next, then the woeful first leg of the trip (the Air India A320neo from Singapore) in September 2024, and finally the full, picture-packed review of the Air India A350 — expanded from the shorter review that was published on 29 February.

The path from one A350 to another goes via a circumambulating maze of corridors

Sunday, 25 February, 9:30am. This was the elongated, elegant A350, VT-JRB, that’d carried me here, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International (BOM), from Kempegowda International (BLR) — both of which are among my favourite airports in the world in terms of their design and aesthetics — before I’d take another A350 to my home airport of Changi, considered the best in the world… outside Qatar*, that is!

*I’m not all that convinced that Hamad deserves that Skytrax number-one ranking, given how its luxury boutiques and lounges are mostly tailored for millionaires and influencers, while the ordinary traveller is often greatly inconvenienced for basic services. As Homer Simpson might say, looking at that place’s IATA code: D’OH!

As sexy as sexy can possibly get for an Indian aircraft. After flying entirely on domestic routes until April 2024, and a bit to Dubai from May to August, 1 September is when the Air India A350 will head to Heathrow for the first time, followed by the US — both JFK and EWR — in November. That’s where these beauties truly belong, to remedy the years-old malaise permeating AI’s longhaul product!

These were the aircraft on the ground at BOM at the time, mostly VT-registered A320/1s as you’d expect for all the morning flights — save for HZ-AQH, a Saudia A330-300, and a few assorted widebodies having arrived some time earlier like Virgin Atlantic’s A350-1000 G-VLIB and Ethiopian’s 787-9 ET-AUR, the latter of which features prominently later in this report.

One thing that I don’t like about BOM — one of the only things, to be precise — is the fact that once you get off the aircraft, you have to go around in seemingly unending circles to get to the domestic baggage claim (or, for international flights, immigration) area. It’s a very long trek indeed, but the travellators and the intricate art on the walls do make things a fair bit easier — and, if you’re desperately in need (read: elderly, disabled or with a large family or goods in tow), buggy carts will ferry you there.

Just look at this collage of messages (third row, below) decorated with trinkets that you might expect to find on the locks hanging from a European city bridge!

A lengthy traipsing-along later, I found myself at the gents’ room, where I freshened myself, and after that I walked a bit more to the domestic arrivals area. As with all Indian airports, and unlike Changi, this corridor is only for arriving passengers, with departing ones one level above this.

A few steps later I was at the baggage collection belts, and quickly retrieved my luggage from AI589 before proceeding past the baggage assistance counters — with the new Air India branding prominently displayed — and towards the exit, after which lay the lifts to the international departures.

All around was a vast range of celebrity advertising, as you’ll find practically everywhere in Indian metro airports — all the more so at this home of banks and Bollywood, the financial ans entertainment capital.

I informed my parents — who’d sent the new dance-themed Air India safety video (though it wasn’t screened on my AI A350) — and then had a look at my upcoming SQ flight, and in particular at the meals. Too bad most of those dishes ended up as khayali pulao (a Hindi idiom for ‘castles in the air’, with pulao being an Indian rice dish)!

BOM T2 Departures Check-in: Miles above the DELsappointment

This was my third time at BOM T2’s departure area, shared between domestic and international flights, but my first international departure from here. (March 2023: Vistara from SIN, AI to MAA; December 2023: SQ from SIN, Vistara to BLR; February 2024: AI from BLR, SQ to SIN.) This kept the Vistara–AI–SQ cycle at BOM repeating for another round — but that won’t happen any more, now that Vistara will be gone for good from November 2024!

Between the ceiling design, the oh-so-Mumbai square blue numerals and the overall Indian-meets-global aesthetic, this remains one of my favourite terminals anywhere, beaten only by the T2s at Changi and BLR and Changi T3. It was leaps and bounds ahead of Delhi T3, which I’d visited earlier that week — my first time at DEL in 9 years — and found to be very grey, dull and ‘DELsappointing’.

I moved to the Singapore Airlines counters at the far left end of the terminal, at the same place as British Airways, and was told that my small pink suitcase — filled with a ton of books — could not be taken as cabin baggage, and had to be checked in as excess baggage, which would cost me a hefty ₹10,000 (roughly US$120)!!! Fortunately, I made the most of this rude shock by paying the excess-baggage fee with a credit card that gave bonus miles for non-SGD transactions.

Below you can see the handwritten sign that pointed passengers to their respective check-in counter islands for certain domestic flights, as well as three international airlines: Emirates, All Nippon Airways and the exotic Yemenia, which I’d spotted at BOM in March 2023.

I was then handed my very un-designed boarding pass, and took a look at the sweeping, majestic décor of BOM T2’s departures during the day, with the morning sunshine streaming through. After which I went through Immigration (the first time at BOM’s departures) and security, and proceeded a level down to the (magnificently resplendent!) international departures area, which were as dazzling as their domestic equivalent here.

These were some of the planes on the ground at the time, the most noteworthy among them being a Sichuan Airlines cargo A330-200 (B-308L): a rarity in an otherwise China-unfriendly country.
However, my previous Indian home airport, Chennai (MAA), is a key destination for Chinese cargo airlines such as YTO Cargo Airlines, SF Airlines and this, the freight division of the Chengdu-based Sichuan Airlines (code: 3U) that was China’s first operator of the A350, in a panda livery at that!

BOM T2 International Departures: Perhaps the best Indian airport there is (alongside BLR)

For the first time, I found myself in Mumbai’s Terminal 2 departure area as an international traveller, having been a domestic traveller in March and December 2023 — but the space is exactly the same, and both domestic and international travellers have the same array of retail stores. Which, to be honest, is an AWESOME array of retail stores, between the resplendent décor (especially the gorgeously low ceilings!), the stellar plethora of Indian and international food/apparel/accessories/books/everything else shops, and the affordable nature of them all. Take that, Dior/Gucci/Louis-Vuitton-laden Changi!

The inside was one of the most distinctively and remarkably Indian retail spaces I’ve seen, with only BLR T2 — which opened in 2023, nine years after this — one-upping it in terms of décor and aesthetics (but not views!). This is something that Changi can never do, or for that matter any global airport (like DXB and HKG) with no domestic flights and hence very little leeway to showcase the culture and heritage of its own country.

Even better than it were the exquisite planespotting opportunities, ranging from my preceding Air India A350, to a British Airways 787-9, to Saudia and Emirates widebodies, to my upcoming Singapore Airlines A350. That said, more often than not during the daytime, above 70% of the planes are IndiGo and AI/Vistara A320/1s… aside from that Air India 747-400 (VT-EVA), which was flown out of BOM in April 2024 to Paine Field, headed for the scrapyard at Roswell, New Mexico. Many a fan, both avgeek and otherwise, shed tears when that Queen of the Skies took off from here on 22 April for a final goodbye. Too bad I will likely never get to fly on the iconic 747-400 — unless Lufthansa holds on to them long enough!

Still, there were a small if significant number of international widebodies, ranging from the above BA 787-9 (G-ZBKS) to this Air Mauritius A330-200 (3B-NCL) with quite a varied history:
• first VT-JWD (2006–2012) for the erstwhile Indian premium carrier Jet Airways (9W), briefly leased to Oman Air and Gulf Air;
• then A6-EYY (2012–2015) for 9W’s strategic partner Etihad Airways — a big culprit behind 9W’s financial woes and eventual grounding in 2019 — which leased it to Air Seychelles;
• then S7-ADB (2015–2018), re-registered in the Seychelles but still leased from Etihad;
• then DQ-FJO (2018–2021) for another tropical island carrier (but this time in the Pacific): Fiji Airways — after which she was grounded without an operator from February 2021 to April 2023;
• and finally 3B-NCL (2023–present), returning to the Indian Ocean after half a decade, with Air Mauritius.

And now this bird was back at her original home, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International — even though Jet Airways has long ceased to exist, despite a ridiculous struggle to relaunch it that has been deadlocked for years between the Jalan–Kalrock Consortium and the airline’s lenders, with the poor moribund company heading towards neither a relaunch nor even a liquidation!

Anyway, I could see the tail of my bird, 9V-SHL, parked at Gate 77 in the distance, and that’s where I would head via a long and lovely corridor of passageways and paintings.

As I moved away from the central atrium, the retail outlets started to diminish in number and quantity, which I guess is the case for most Indian airports’ international sections compared to their domestic ones. Still, it maintained a very plush, premium façade, which DEL T3 is hard-pressed to even come close to, let alone surpass. Suffice it to say that I was very much let down by India’s largest airport when I visited there — for the first time in nine years — earlier that week, but fortunately BOM and BLR (even HYD) have no such concerns!

Around this time a Saudia A330-300 (HZ-AQH) had taken off for Jeddah as SQ771, which I’d spotted two hours back when disembarking from the Air India A350. Later, my AI A350 had taken off for Chennai as part of the BLR–BOM–MAA triangular rotation of AI589, while an Ethiopian 787-9 (ET-AUR, named Tokyo) would prepare to head back to Addis Ababa as ET641. I’d have my fill of that beauty at the gate!

Eventually I reached the far end of the terminal, where a random McDonald’s and KFC stood, as did a blank red AirAsia India Air India Express A320neo, VT-ATJ. A couple of months later this would become the second A320neo — or, indeed, non-737 MAX — to feature the new Air India Express livery, but for now the only such A320neo was VT-ATD, which I’d managed to snap while landing at BLR a few days before.

People were already lining up to board SQ421, or continuing to lounge around the comfy chairs. There were even a few, somewhat old (early 2010s), all-in-one Lenovo PCs running what I believe was Android KitKat — oh the glorious pre-Material (2014) days of Android! — from the lock screen, and one small child was intrigued by the arrangement, and he tried fiddling with them.

Before long boarding for SQ421 started to be called in the expected order: PPS elites, then Business Class, then KrisFlyer and Star Alliance elites, then the rearmost rows of economy — which I always prefer — and so on until the front. Meanwhile, ET641 to Addis Ababa next door had closed its doors for boarding, and the pretty Dreamliner, ET-AUR, had started to pull out of the gate.

Never a moment goes by at BOM T2 when I don’t take in the sheer joy of the blue square numerals, wooden square lattices or precious, pretty lampshades suspended from the ceilings — little things that make Mumbai so special, which Bengaluru has now incorporated, and where Delhi (or for that matter Chennai) fail so miserably!

Besides the typical roster of domestic A320s and a few 737s, there were a handful of more exotic aircraft at this time, among them a Gulfstream private jet — aside from the few widebody aircraft from overseas.

At 11:30 it was finally time to step on board yet another Singapore Airlines A350 Regional, but this one, unlike the others, would be far from short and boring and uneventful — instead turning out to be the joint-longest (tied with CX624 BLR–HKG in December 2023) and certainly the most eventful A350 flight I’d ever taken until that point!

The flight: Boarding and departure

Flight: Singapore Airlines SQ421/SIA421
Date: Sunday, 25 February 2024
Route: Mumbai–Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (VABB/BOM) to Singapore Changi (WSSS/SIN)
Aircraft: 9V-SHL, Airbus A350-900 (regional configuration)
Age: 4 years 2 months at the time (built: 21 November 2019, delivered: 6 December 2019)
Seat: 66K (starboard side, window)
Boarding: 11:40am Indian Standard Time (IST), UTC +5:30 (2:10pm Singapore Time, UTC +8)
Departure: 12:35pm IST (3:05pm SGT)
Arrival: 7:50pm SGT (5:20pm IST)
Duration: 4 hours 45 minutes

Notes:
• Sixth 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 the previous one being SQ191 from Hanoi (9V-SHV) on 2 January 2024. The preceding flight, AI589 from Bengaluru on VT-JRB, made Air India the fourth airline whose A350 I’ve flown, after Thai, SQ  and Cathay Pacific.
• A rare flight taking place mostly in the afternoon hours, which is somewhat less common for India-to-east-Asia flights compared to the more common redeyes. Even so, SQ has plenty of daytime flights from as many as five Indian cities, with the one from Delhi (SQ401) landing at 5:30pm — well before the others from Chennai (SQ525), Bengaluru (SQ509)* and the 5x-weekly from Hyderabad (SQ519), with this flight from Mumbai (SQ421) at almost 8pm being the last of the lot. Air India, IndiGo and Vistara — until it ceases operations in November 2024 — also have some daytime eastbound flights to Singapore from a few of these cities, with Vistara’s UK107 from Mumbai landing shortly after SQ421.

*My final flights of 2024 are set to be SQ508/SQ509 to and from Bengaluru, which are operated by the 737 MAX 8 on Thursdays and Sundays and the A350 Regional (9V-SH* series) on other days. They will be on 25 and 30 December (Wednesday and Monday), guaranteeing two more A350 Regionals on a year that started with another such on SQ191. If only Thai Airways had such consistency instead of its umpteen swaps from the A350 to the 777-200ER on the BLR route — as I was victim of once again, both legs this time, in August 2024!
(I took the redeye flights to/from BLR, SQ510/511, in June and July 2023, which I found to be perfectly decent but singularly unremarkable.)

A dense boarding process on a packed flight from India

As is most often the case on SQ, I proceeded all the way to the back and to the left, and settled at 66K: a seat that — along with 67K, 71K and the like — has become my standard seat when flying on SQ or CX’s A350s, since not every airline has such high seat numbers on their A350s, or any widebodies.

There was one little girl (not more than 2) who was running around in the centre section, at which a flight attendant requested the kid’s mother to stop and hold her, who got it done with a simple ‘Hey, Arya!’. The mother then confessed that little Arya was best kept in the central seats, and not anywhere near the aisle!

Around 12 noon my parents had a video call with me — something I don’t often do from a plane, given how hard it is to hear the other party without being loud yourself. I showed them the plane and the people around, and then the one and only SQ safety video — that soft soother of the sights and sounds of the city-state — played.

I can fly SQ dozens of times and still not be bored or irritated or vexed with the video, or its tranquility, or its melody, or the beautiful bright-eyed baby with his parents in the river safari, or the closing shot above the Gardens by the Bay… I could go on, ad infinitum, in praising it. (On this flight from Mumbai, there were Hindi subtitles, and some announcements were made in Hindi as well — but not Marathi, the native language of Maharashtra state.)

Now I fired up the onscreen menu, which I’d discovered for the first time on the flight from Hanoi at the start of January, and it seems — though I may be wrong — that only selected A350 Regional (9V-SH*) aircraft have a full menu instead of a QR code. (On a more recent flight, SQ705 from Bangkok in August 2024 on an identical A350 (9V-SHS), there was only the QR code — as is the case on all other SQ aircraft, including longhaul A350s.)

Having flown the reverse route (SIN–BOM) two months before on the A380, and having had an exquisite dinner there, I had very high expectations from the Indian meal this time, and in particular the chicken meal. Boy was I to be proved resoundingly, glaringly wrong! And not just from the midday glare on the screen… (Full resolution here.)

Still, the meal description was as elaborate and detailed as possible, despite the non-existence of some of the actual meal options — in contrast to SriLankan Airlines’ A330-300 in November 2023, where only the bare minimum of descriptions were provided in the IFE. However, the actual meal itself was delectable, coupled with some fantastic service, and I’d even ordered a specially arranged cake!

Around this time, an A330 of little-known French cargo airline CMA CGM Air Cargo had arrived, while VT-AEF, Air India’s first ex-Delta Air Lines 777-200LR, had landed as AI116 from JFK. These provided some respite from the endless succession of A320s landing from all over the country.

Moreover, I spied a highly exotic aircraft in the airspace of southern Maharashtra state (whose capital is Mumbai): a 777-200ER of Russian holiday airline Red Wings, which was flying a charter from Sri Lanka’s Hambantota (HRI) airport!!! A once-in-a-blue-moon rarity, if there ever was one in Indian skies!

This white-elephant airport was opened to provide connectivity to southern Sri Lanka but ended up being totally unused, with Colombo’s Bandaranaike Airport remaining the island’s sole international gateway — aside from Jaffna (JAF) at the northern tip, with ATR 72 flights to Chennai by the Indian government’s Alliance Air, and more recently by IndiGo. As such, Russian holiday airlines are the only ones that use Hambantota Airport at all, since it has zero scheduled commercial service.

Now hot towels — a signature of the SQ experience in economy — were handed out, as I looked at the Bollywood options on offer. This would be a perfect flight, at nearly 5 hours, to clock in a nice, feel-good Bollywood movie — a far cry from the atrocious Pathaan (the second-highest Indian grosser of 2023) on the A380 to Mumbai in December. After this I went to Thales’ 3DMaps and previewed the route, with the added nifty touch of showing the aircraft registration on top.

The captain soon apologised that there would be a slight delay in taking off, due to runway congestion (not unexpected at Mumbai), and stated that this was of course outside his control.

Already people were starting to complain about the cramped SQ seat compared to what they were used to. One gent was speaking on the phone, ‘Only the name is Singapore Airlines; the rest is all IndiGo. There is no space at all in the seat. This is as tight as it gets!’ He was incorrigibly dumb, as he did not know the difference between that sardine-squeezed A320/1neo with no IFE or hot meals and this all-singing, all-dancing A350 with the bells and whistles you expect from one of the world’s top airlines.

Anyway, I shared some pictures of my preceding AI A350 flight with my parents, which had even more bells and whistles that were enough to put even SQ to shame. Like that princely 4K screen, or that crisp tail camera — never seen on SQ — or the fact that it had premium economy in the first place (this one didn’t, but the other kind of SQ A350 does): nothing short of a quantum leap for Air India, which had thus far been associated with such unsavoury things as rickety aircraft, non-functional IFE and even urination incidents(!!!).

The map showed a brief glance of the cities in the region, with population and altitude details — though nothing to the extent of Panasonic’s mind-bogglingly customisable Arc system that’s present on the Air India A350, the Vistara A321neo and (as far as SQ is concerned) the 737 MAX 8. Meanwhile the male flight attendant was visibly apologetic for not being able to hand out water bottles after takeoff; he would do so after departure. The first of several shamefaced apologies he would make during the course of the flight!

The passenger at the next seat chose the ill-fated Lal Singh Chaddha (2022), based on the evergreen Forrest Gump — and the comeback movie of veteran thespian Aamir Khan after a four-year gap — but it achieved none of the commercial success that the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Pathaan did (awful though it was) and not much critical praise either!

At half-past twelve, 9V-SHL turned past the CMA CGM Air Cargo A330, past the graveyard of parked Jet Airways 777-300ERs, past the Sichuan Airlines cargo A330, and swivelled onto the runway with some Vistara A320neo in hot pursuit. This is the world’s busiest single-runway airport: even though there are actually two runways, the fact that they intersect means they cannot be used simultaneously, greatly constraining BOM’s capacity.

Some bystanding photographer might have seen our plane pass by, and trust me, there are a great many outstanding plane pictures from Mumbai’s apron. So much so that I have a specific name: The Mumbai Shot, where the plane’s left side is in full view as it turns from the taxiway behind. For examples, look no further than photographer Aneesh Bapaye’s enviable collection of high-resolution DSLR pictures, at his gallery on Planespotters.net, with another great photographer (though with far fewer pictures) being Anshul Kadam.

I had a glance at the Air Mauritius A330’s activity, followed by Vistara’s fleet of ten A321neos, every single one of which was in action, and all but one on international routes — including one to Mauritius itself. Then I shared my flight’s location, while my dad commended AI’s A350 as classy, being reminded of some old flights from Hong Kong and Singapore in the 1990s, and my mom asked me to write on AI’s A350 online. ‘Tomar lekha sabai porbe’ (everyone will read your article) — and they sure did on this website from 29 February!

Also, a sad word was thrown in on Jet Airways’ never-ending relaunch saga, and I said, ‘Ekta kana kori era dite parbe na!’ (The Jalan–Kalrock Consortium will not be able to spend a single penny!)

Shortly thereafter it was our turn to depart, as the bright blue afternoon skies at this brilliant airport — a far cry from the depressing foggy polluted gloom that is Delhi — beckoned for us to soar into them. And so 9V-SHL accepted the invitation and launched on a five-hour journey eastbound, leaving behind what is now my favourite Indian city overall (despite having barely visited it) and heading for one of my favourite cities in the world (having lived in Singapore for six years now) — I’m zooming headlong into Mumbai meri jaan (Mumbai is my lifeblood) territory!

Namkeens (salty snacks) to eat, and Namkeen to watch

First I had a glance at KrisWorld’s music selection, which unfortunately was all washed out by the glare from the window. The more memorable and noteworthy selections were from South Indian (Tamil) composer Anirudh Ravchander, who I’ve mentioned in previous reports with respect to the soundtrack for Jawan (2023’s biggest Indian blockbuster), and the late KK — short for Krishnakumar Kunnath — who was one of 2000s Bollywood’s most celebrated singers, but sadly and unexpectedly dying on-stage in mid-2022.

This was a broad overview of KrisWorld’s new musical offerings for the month, as well as a deep-dive into some videos about the airline itself, which I’ve touched upon in a previous flight from Bengaluru. Another airline I’ve seen with such an impressive range of cabin crew- and pilot-centric videos in its IFE is KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

Now flight attendant Ong Koon Poh — Mr Ong since the surname comes first — came around with a pair of peas and crackers for the rear passengers. He said, ‘We’re giving two per passenger because you’ve been such good boys and girls today!’ He was the one who’d said that water bottles would be handed out after takeoff, and that still hadn’t been done. I did not envy the poor guy his work, but he did it all with the politest and sincerest smile humanly possible.

As we soared above the dusty brown Deccan Plateau, a Singapore Girl named Nurnatasha came down the aisle with drinks, and I had no intention to besmirch my streak of having only 7-Up or Sprite… I kid, I kid, there was no such streak (I’ve had other sodas and colas on occasion), but that’s what I once again chose regardless.

As is the norm on SQ, I connected to the free Wi-Fi — though of course it isn’t available over Indian airspace on medium-haul A350s like this, but the thrill of tracking your own flight while airborne never gets old.

At the same time I was compressing and deleting my old iPhone pictures to save storage, and I chanced upon those from my AirAsia India flight in December 2022 — 421 of them, as it turned out, which was the same as today’s flight number!

In my hand I held a packet of flavoured roasted makhana (lotus seeds or fox nuts) — I’d brought it along — that has become increasingly popular as an Indian snack nowadays, and that would set the stage for the film I was going to pick now.

Now I went — as I can afford to on these slightly longer (>4-hour) flights — to the Bollywood section, and as you’d expect for KrisWorld there was quite a range of new and old movies. Among the new ones, I steered clear of big-ticket blockbusters — having been burned badly by Pathaan two months before on the A380 — and eventually chose a small-town slice-of-life comedy-drama, Sharmaji Namkeen (Mr Sharma’s Salty Snacks), which was released in 2022 and which I’d been meaning to watch. That would be a good way to tie in with the salty snacks I’d been having, both the makhana I’d brought and the peas and crackers handed out by the crew!

This was the last film of veteran actor Rishi Kapoor, who died on 30 April 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, he could not even complete his scenes and the film threatened to remain unfinished — until another legend, Paresh Rawal, filled in his shoes. It’s a rare example of two people playing the same character in Bollywood.

The movie started with a special tribute by Rishi’s son Ranbir Kapoor, who emphasised his gratitude to the film for carrying on his father’s legacy — and to Paresh Rawal for ably filling a most unusual character gap, ensuring that the old but full-of-life Rishi would delight his fans for one last time.

The film got under way with some drool-inducing shots of fried snacks and sweetmeats being placed at a speaker event, where B.G. Sharma, played by the inimitable Rishi ‘Chintu’ Kapoor, was forced to give a speech on how he supported his company’s Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) — despite personally not being in favour of being pushed out of the workforce at age 58, two years earlier than necessary. How he deals with the boredom of a retired life, with his adult sons not being much help, forms the plot of the movie.

Soon I had crossed the Indian coastline, and the Wi-Fi worked in a jiffy. Among the more interesting aircraft in the vicinity was Qantas’ QF67 from Sydney to Bengaluru — it doesn’t fly to Mumbai (MEL–DEL and SYD–BLR are its Indian routes) — operated by A330-200 VH-EBS.

Meanwhile my mother waxed lyrical on just how lovely of an airline 9W was, and how the brand has been irrefutably tarnished: both by the Jalan–Kalrock Consortium’s utter failure to relaunch it even five years after its grounding, and by the imprisonment of its flamboyant founder Naresh Goyal. (To add fuel to the fire, not only did the once-respected man go to jail but he even lost his wife, Anita Goyal, to cancer in May 2024.)

Later she commented on just how much she missed me today. ‘It feels bad for you to leave us, but your place of work is the real deal. So keep doing well at your job, and I hope you’ll feel even better after this break.’ Wise words!

As young movie actors stuff their mouths, older passengers go hungry

Two hours into the flight, the film reached a juncture where some young kids were fighting over a meal in a fancy restaurant, while we, the passengers at the rear of 9V-SHL, still had to sit hungry — even as those up front in the forward economy cabin were polishing off the last of their meals!

More pictures on, and discussions of, food in the movie — lunch-break discussions that made me all the more ravenous. Here Sandeep ‘Rinku’ Sharma, the elder of B.G. Sharma’s two sons, is conversing with colleagues at office over lunch, but then mispronounces ‘catastrophe’ as ‘castrophe’ — which the South Delhi (i.e., hoity-toity) girlfriend is quick to point out.

Meanwhile the old gent is bored stiff watching those stereotypically melodramatic Indian ‘saas-bahu‘ serials on TV, where an older woman slaps a younger man for announcing his marriage to a girl of his liking without so much as getting her consent! Some channel-switching later, he winds up at a teleshopping channel — which, interestingly, directly ripped off the logo of ANTV, one of Indonesia’s most popular TV channels.

I, too, was getting as bored as the genial old guy in the movie!

And so were my parents, getting increasingly anxious by the passing minute, asking me Khete dilo? (Did they serve food?) every so often. Given the high number of comments in Bengali, for this once I’ve included the translations in the picture itself.

Now we were part of a line of aircraft crossing the Bay of Bengal, with a Qatar Airways A350-1000 (A7-AOB) right behind us as QR960 to Denpasar. Elsewhere, today’s equivalent daytime SQ flight from Bengaluru (SQ509) — which departed as exactly the same time as us — was operated by the 737 MAX instead of the standard A350, which is the case on Thursdays and Sundays.

On the other hand, SQ525 from Chennai gets the A350 only twice a week (Thursday and Saturday) and the 737 MAX on the others. So MAA gets only two weekly A350s, given that SQ528/529 at night is operated by the 787-10, and SQ526/527 (which used the A350) was scrapped in late October 2023. Oh, how Chennai continues to be short-changed in every way possible!

On screen, a scene from the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Baghban (2003) — wherein the legend plays an old man completely neglected and disrespected by his sons — is being played by some senior citizens in a park, while kids continue to frolic and jump about. Poor Sharma Sr., in a desperate quest to combat his boredom, starts frying tasty snacks — this being his passion — first for his sons and then for some neighbouring aunties who happily invite him to their ‘kitty parties’.

Seeing all those snacks on-screen, I was now getting positively impatient and restless, and the food better arrive, or else…

And then, lo and behold, it did. It goes without saying that the Indian chicken option proved to be the most popular up front — it always is with Indians — and was completely finished, leaving only the Indian vegetarian and Western fish dishes. Naturally I went for the former, since I — despite being Bengali — usually cannot stand eating fish, except in the form of soft fillets (which that option admittedly was, but still).

This was palak paneer (cottage cheese in spiced spinach) with masala dal (braised lentils with spices) and sabzi pulao (vegetable rice) — and honestly it tasted good enough, but had it not gone cold it would have been so much better. Dessert was a coffee caramel cake, which I enjoyed, among the better desserts I’ve had on SQ. These were served with some local Indian accompaniments: Amul butter, Mother Dairy classic dahi (curd), aam ka achaar (mango pickle) and the obligatory, totally-not-required dry bread roll, along with the aforementioned Sprite and tissue-wrapped metal cutlery.

While the quality of the food was excellent, as always on Indian flights, what let me down was the extremely protracted way in which the rear section of the A350 was served. A rare catering fail from the crew (though not the kitchens) of Singapore Airlines! Even so, to their credit, the crew remained magnanimous and remorseful for disappointing so many passengers.

Meanwhile I watched B.G. Sharma berate his younger son, Vinayak ‘Vincy’ Sharma, and ask him to do something worthwhile — bringing to mind a memorable scene from the lovely Do Dooni Chaar (2010), where Rishi and his real-life wife Neetu play a middle-class couple saving up like crazy to buy a small Maruti Suzuki Alto hatchback. A delightful little film if there ever is one!

At long last I could tell my parents that I had eventually been served lunch, and added, ‘With great difficulty. People are still complaining. They served us last, the chicken ran out, etc. But I’m not complaining; I’m happy this is not IndiGo!’

Mother in 3:04 screenshot: ‘What did they give, chicken or just spinach and veggies?’ ‘Horrible. They know the numbers; this is not an invitation to someone’s home where some guest ate too much!’ I cut the poor SQ crew some slack. ‘Palak paneer (palong ponir in Bengali) and dal tadka. IndiGo will never give even this much.’
She continued with the anti-SQ invective, slamming the airline as ‘shabby‘ and recounting how the Granny-made lunch back home would have been much nicer if I were there at the table.

Me in 3:15 screenshot: ‘The plane is a modern A350. Thai Airways can’t do that much; they gave that old broken plane (777-200ER) again.’ (Which they sadly did again in August 2024, on both legs to/from Bengaluru!)
‘What should I eat: carrot cake, yong tau foo, mala and steamboat? This is real Singaporean food. (Which I don’t like.) These get Michelin stars.’ Followed by a bit on how Korean fish dishes smell.

(Then I switched the time to Singapore, and voilà, 3:25 became 5:55: 2.5 hours gone, just like that.)
Mom in 3:25 IST/5:55 SGT screenshot: ‘Okay fine, it seems continental is there. Anyway tell them that you are a blogger and disappointed. Please write about such chalaki (deception) to them. Now rest a bit; I have music class later today.’

And the last paragraph of the note in the first picture: ‘If this were Korea or Taiwan there likely wouldn’t be chicken and veg, only beef and pork… This is India, so you get vegetarian, but not otherwise.’

My belly finally sated, as the sun goes below the horizon

The film progressed. A gaudily decked-up Veena (Juhi Chawla) rolls out the welcome mat for Sharma Sr. and he starts cooking for them — but discovers, to his horror, that the aunties are all here to party! Though of course that’s well justified, given that Veena is a widow (reason: car accident) and she has precious little to do otherwise…

Over at Flightradar24, we were approaching the coastline of Sumatra, and Air India’s A320neo in the Star Alliance livery (VT-EXO) as AI346 from Chennai — which (the flight, not this aircraft!) I took countless times prepandemic — was not far ahead of us. I also spotted an exotic 737 MAX 9 (UP-B3727) of Kazakhstan’s SCAT Airlines, operating as DV5222 from Phuket to Shymkent (CIT) in Kazakhstan.

After this I looked at Sharmaji Namkeen‘s Wikipedia article, and I very much liked what was playing out on screen, all the more so as I knew how it was going to end!

There were still two hours left in the flight, and the actors in some of the scenes reminded me of the roles they played in certain Indian web series — especially Permanent Roommates, the OG of them all, from 2014.

In the fading evening light, I wrote the right side of my journal entry, with the headline text in Hindi being daal chawal wali A350 (a standard lentils-and-rice or ‘bread-and-butter’ A350) compared to the extraordinary Air India A350 on the previous flight. (Full resolution here.)

Now the bright daytime skies had begun to give way to a dusky sunset glow, and the flare of the sun at the line demarcating earth cloud-carpet from sky was a sight to behold.

At 7:20pm SGT (4:50 IST) the movie was approaching its climax, involving a police station, where Rinku (the elder son) is thrown behind bars for ransacking a corrupt builder’s office — only for Veena’s group of awesome aunties to confront the no-less-corrupt police officers and talk them down for their bribery. No wonder I enjoyed this movie a THOUSAND AND ONE times more than that atrocious actioner called Pathaan!

With just half an hour to go, we had already commenced descent into Changi, with 9V-MBF as SQ509 from Bengaluru — plus two more 737 MAXes as SQ519 from HYD and SQ525 from MAA — already having landed before us. The route distribution of airborne A350 Regionals was evenly spread across most flight number series, with the obvious exceptions of SQ0xx (Americas) and SQ3xx (Europe) as those are a bridge too far.

Landing with a happier evening smile than the hangry lunchtime delay

In preparation for final descent, KrisWorld screened a reminder (a) prohibiting the charging of electronic devices and (b) for not forgetting belongings on board. The last vestiges of the golden solar rays were preparing to meld into the pervasive darkness, as our graceful A350 winglet provided a superb contrast against.

In the police station, Veena and co. take it unto themselves to play dumb charades in order to save the senior Sharma, who has now joined his son behind bars — but not for long!

For Veena has a politician friend, and the mamla (issue) is soon solved — a rather facile and simplistic climax, humph! — with the gang clicking a group selfie.

We were now minutes from landing at Changi, and minutes after A380 9V-SKP had taken off for today’s origin, Mumbai, as SQ424 — the same flight number that kicked off my Christmas/New Year 2024 mega-trip across India, Hong Kong and Vietnam!

The movie concludes with a Happily Ever After ending, a tribute to the avuncular Rishi Kapoor, a bunch of mid-credit scenes with him acting like a goof — and a bunch of precious memories of life in general. This movie really was as feel-good as it gets!

Now the last traces of daylight had finally given way to darkness, helping illuminate the glowing, twinkling lights of Singapore and the signature ships in the sea. At around a quarter to eight, 9V-SHL, after nearly five hours  — most of them spent miserable and hungry — swooped down on the Changi runway and glided to a halt, bringing to an end this strange but still okay flight: a day with a contrast between two A350s with Air India being the winner in every regard!

Here was 3DMaps when we were airborne for the final few moments, plus the onward connections.

We took our time to taxi to the gate, by which time two Cathay Pacific A350s had landed in quick succession from Hong Kong: B-LRV as CX657 and B-LRT as CX739. There weren’t that many recent longhaul arrivals, save for a Qantas A330-200 (from Perth) and a Qatar A350-1000.

Parked next door was 9V-SCH, a 787-10 which had landed as SQ877 from Taipei an hour before, and would now head to Chennai as SQ528. I commended the cabin crew — particularly Mr Ong, who had borne the brunt of many passengers’ ire, but handled the situation with equanimity and composure. Thanking him for doing the best he could, I proceeded to leave the mostly dark blue-and-purple cabin — while also paying a visit to the lavatory, which I don’t often do — and out of the plane.

Wrapping up the tale of two A350s in a day

Once in the familiar surrounds of Terminal 3 at Changi, I turned out of Gate A15 — where a sign was placed for immediate boarding for SQ221 to Sydney — and rightwards past the Evolution Gardens (full resolution of descriptory notice here) in the direction of immigration and arrivals.

Once downstairs in the Immigration area — where the ad above, for once, was not a bank but Marriott Bonvoy — I punched in my SG Arrival Card details on my phone (for once, instead of the rows of iPads placed there), scanned my passport at the automated machine and was let through, after which I went straight to Belt 44.

Terminal 3’s baggage belts are located in a high-ceilinged area below the Rainforest Experience — as I tested out before a SriLankan flight in November 2023 — but this time I didn’t have the mood to see all of that. In fact it was quite a walk to get to the trolleys, as they were all bunched up at Gate 41 (with China Eastern’s MU565 having arrived from Shanghai) and it was rather exhausting to wheel them all the way to Belt 44, but I got it all done in the end by 8:30.

I decided to have dinner at the Korean bakery/café chain Paris Baguette, seeing as it was located right outside the terminal — plus it’s a partner of Kris+, Singapore Airlines’ lifestyle rewards app which awards extra bonus miles per SGD spent, over and above the miles awarded from credit cards! I could well have gone to the sprawling basement food court below the T3 arrivals — as I did after landing here in the evening on SriLankan in April 2023 and Gulf Air in November — but chose to pass on it this time.

I went for the self-proclaimed ‘best-ever garlic bread’ — which I do indeed find to be among the best I’ve tasted, between the cheesiness, the butteriness and the overall unhealthy sinfulness. This was paired with a Caesar Chicken Baguette, which balanced out things with its comparatively healthy factor.

Among the most interesting latest arrivals was XU-726, an A320 owed by Cambodia’s Sky Angkor Airlines and wearing a yellow variation of its livery — but actually operating for Myanmar Airways International (MAI), having landed as 8M233. Another noteworthy one was N29984, a United 787-9, having arrived as UA29 from San Francisco — the early-morning version of which is UA1.

(Interesting how both UA1 and UB1 (the latter being Myanmar National Airlines, not to be confused with the above MAI) — from San Francisco and Yangon, respectively — are both arrivals at Singapore!)

With the meal at Paris Baguette done at around 9 o’clock, I went straight to the taxi rank without bothering with Grab or Gojek, and before long a Hyundai Ioniq — the current standard for ComfortDelGro’s taxi fleet — in an IKEA livery turned up. I hopped on it, with bag and baggage, and it whisked me away from the World’s Best Airport — Changi is the rightful holder of that title, not the overhyped, underequipped Doha Hamad — and on a 15-minute ride in the night sky towards home near the east coast.

Before I went to sleep, I had a glance at the nighttime flying routes of the A350 Regional fleet, though 9V-SHL was having a rest. Having texted my parents that I’d reached safely and was hanging out with a few friends at home, I slept with the satisfaction of again having flown two A350s in a day — the groundbreaking Air India A350 being the better of them!