On my recent trip to Europe for work and a visit to some of my family I deliberately booked on the Airbus A380 - Singapore Airlines had just acquired its second or third addition to its A380 fleet and started flying the Singapore Heathrow route. In fact I thought I was going on the inaugural flight but it turned out I was on the second ever A380 flight from Singapore to London.
I'm a geek when it comes to flying and was really looking forward to the flight. I had booked on the upper deck (just because there was one I suppose) and that feeling of being 'on top' was quite noticeable when the air bridge from the gate to the door of the plane sloped upwards and especially noticeable when, during taxi, I looked out of my window down on a 747 next to us.
The interior looked good with quite a radically new color scheme compared to most of the SQ fleet. Large widescreen TV's dominated the backs of the seats and, after sitting for a while in my seat and having the person in front of me recline, I felt that there was more room that I'd usually get in an SQ economy seat.
Although the new in-flight system has been on the newer planes in the 777
fleet for some months now, this was my first experience of the new and comparatively huge seat back (wide) screen and the new controller and UI. It was, as expected, a joy to use and to watch. Although the huge choice of content - over 100 on-demand movies - is the same as the older system, the on screen menus and navigation are significantly improved and watching on the bigger screen is, of course, great!
For you really geeky guys and my colleagues interested in UI there's a video of it in action below.
For my trip back I had used airmiles to upgrade to business class. Although I took a couple of pictures you should really check here to see it in its full glory. The amount of room was fantastic and the level of service and quality of food very high. (Although my experience was spoiled a little by screaming children sat near me!)
I am not going to dwell to much on the business class part of the trip. I'm just going to remember it fondly as one of those privileges one has now and again.
