Our Maldives trip started off in India, and to get there we flew Singapore Airlines (SIA) business class. The award booking cost 123,000 miles per person for the one way flight from SFO-SIN-DEL, and we transferred points from the Amex Platinum to do it. The SFO to SIN leg is one of the longest flights in the world, so we were eager to see how we would do on the 17.5 hour flight. The plane was an Airbus A350-900, which I always enjoy flying in.
We have flown Singapore Airlines business class and Suites many times over the years, and it is one of our favorite airlines to travel. They are transfer partners with both Amex and Chase, so this makes it a lot easier to get enough miles to make an award booking. We took two flights in the first class suites back in 2016, and those flights remain my favorite airline experience of all time. On the other hand, I have mixed reviews on the SIA Business class product. In general, SIA has one of the best business class soft products available. What I mean by “soft product” is all of the variable aspects of a flight. To me this includes things like the lounge, the food and drinks, the amenities, and the service on board. SIA business class has one of the best soft products on the market, hands down. The book-the-cook dining option (pre-booking meals that would not be available on the in-flight menu) has been responsible for many of the best airline meals I have ever had.
The biggest issue I have with SIA business class flights is the hard product; specifically the seat they use on the A350-900. The first and most glaring issue for me is when reclining the seat, it does not go fully flat unless you convert the seat to a bed first. While seated, you can get the seat into a recliner type position with the back going down a bit and the legs coming up a bit. SIA calls this the “Lazy-Z” position. In order to turn the seat into a bed, you need to get out of the seat and fold the backrest portion down toward the feet, which then allows you to be in a fully flat position. That's all fine and well I suppose, but if you now want to go from a fully flat position back into a reclining or upright position, you need to again exit the seat and reconfigure it by lifting the backrest to its original upright and locked position. As somebody who frequently changes the position of the seat during a flight, this is quite annoying.
Another other issue I have with the seat is the footrest area. As a 6’ tall guy with size 13 feet, it's challenging for me to comfortably get my feet into the footwell. I end up having to sleep in a sort of fetal position while stacking my feet on top of each other to get them to fit in the space. One solution to this is to book the bulkhead seats in the business class cabin, which provides a much larger foot area. While there is no guarantee that these seats are available for your flight, the bassinets are located in the bulkhead area, so flying with a child who can use a bassinet can actually help you book the bulkhead seats. It seems like the airlines block off the seats associated with the bassinets until a ticketed passenger who is flying with an infant comes along. For our upcoming SIA flights to Frankfurt and to Singapore, we had no trouble snagging the bulkhead/bassinet seats after adding Jai to our reservation. The airlines also seem to release the bulkhead seats closer to departure (around 24 hours prior to the flight) if nobody has claimed it for a bassinet by then. So make sure to check for bulkhead availability when it is closer to departure time.
For our return flight, we positioned from Malé to Bombay for a purchased flight on Singapore Airlines business class from BOM-SIN-SEA. It is very cheap and easy to get to/from India and the Maldives, so when I couldn't find a good flight home from Malé, I started looking from India. One thing to note if you are going to do this, you do need a visa to enter India as a US citizen, so this option won’t be practical for everybody. It took some extra planning on our part as well even though we originated from India, because the typical 30 day Indian e-Visa is single entry only. I ended up getting the 5 year Indian e-Visa instead, which allows for multiple entries in that period (Akhila has Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status, so she can come and go to India as she pleases for her whole life).
Singapore Airlines uses the Adani Lounge in Mumbai for their business/first class/elites. The lounge was nice and spacious, and had a spa area available for reasonably priced massages. It was a great place to spend a bit of time before our flight. We got to fly on the Airbus A380 for the BOM-SIN segment, and we were in the upper deck where the business class cabin is located. We have flown SIA from SIN-DEL in the past in the first class suites, which was the best flight experience I have ever had. The first class suites are located on the bottom deck of the plane, in the front. SIA has a great business class lounge in Singapore as well, with good food selections, showers, and decent drinks.
We used our Amex Platinum credit card to book the flight directly with Singapore Air, which gave us 5X points for that purchase. The cost of that flight was approximately $1300 per person. I tried for months to find an award booking for the return flight, but unfortunately our return date had no flexibility so I was stuck. Having flexibility in your travel dates gives a lot more opportunity to find a good award flight redemption in business/first class, but unfortunately, due to our jobs, our schedule is set almost a year ahead of time, which severely limits our flexibility. From Seattle we used the Southwest Airlines companion pass to purchase buy-one-get-one-free flights back to California.
Comentários