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Review: the Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER business class seat

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This is my review of the Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER business class seat.  It is not a review of the flight.

You should be suspicious when you read a review of an overnight flight.  When we came back from Singapore last Sunday, the departure time was 1am.  As soon as the seatbelt sign went off, I had the crew make up my bed and I went to sleep.  I woke up in time for a quick breakfast and we landed.  End of flight.

My outbound flight was almost as unproductive.  Departing at almost 10pm, I ate in the lounge and only nibbled at what was available on-board before settling down to sleep.  I did not watch a single moment of TV during the combined 25 hours of flying time.

This means that I don’t feel qualified to give a proper review of the food or the entertainment.  There is no on-board bar on the Boeing 777 fleet so I can’t review that either.  The cabin crew were great but that tends to come as a given with Singapore Airlines.

What I can show you is the seat.

Most people would guess that Emirates was the first airline to get the Airbus A380.  In fact, Singapore Airlines was the first airline to take delivery back in 2007/8 and received the first three aircraft to enter commercial service.

The Boeing 777-300ER (the ER stands for ‘extended range’) aircraft are newer than most of the A380s.  This means that they have a more modern business class seat.

Frankly, it is a massive improvement in terms of looks.  This is the A380 business class seat which I saw a couple of weeks ago:

Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300 business class seat

Here is the Boeing 777-300ER version:

Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300 business class seat

and

Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300 business class seat

and

Max Burgess

The colour palette is much improved with a mix of warm browns.  It feels ‘right’ in a way that the A380 business class seat did not.

The seats are in a 1-2-1 formation compared to BA’s 2-4-2 in Club World.  It is the widest business class seat in the sky.  My two kids could happily sit side by side and watch TV together with plenty of room to spare.

There is another interesting feature.  Most flat bed seats are simply seats which go flat.  The Singapore seat flips over to become a bed.

The logic here is that the comfiest seat is a leather seat, whilst the comfiest bed is a cotton mattress.  The ‘flip’ seat allows you to have both – you are not sweating onto a leather seat at night.  The only downside is that the process is fairly complex for the novice and you need to ask a crew member to do it for you.

What you can’t tell from the photographs is that you CANNOT put your feet under the entire seat in front of you when the seat is in bed mode.  There is a relatively small cubby hole to one side where your feet slot in!  This forces you sleep diagonally in the seat which is a little odd.

All in all, the business class on the Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER is impressive.  I didn’t feel that it was the ‘best ever’, to be honest, but on a night flight you really cannot tell.  I have now flown three Singapore Airlines flights in the last 12 months and all of them have been overnight.  I really need to book myself on a day service (Manchester to Munich perhaps!) to get the full experience.

Comments (14)

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  • Alex says:

    “The Boeing 777-300ER (the ER stands for ‘extended range’) aircraft are newer than most of the A380s. This means that they have a more modern business class seat.”

    Raffles – this is not correct. The majority of SIA’s 77Ws are in fact older than their A380s and the Business Class seat on the A380 is the seat which is fitted to all bar five of SIA’s 77W fleet. There are five newer 77Ws which SIA took delivery of from last year; these are registrations 9V-SWV through Z which feature the newer Business Class seat you review here (SIA internally codes these aircraft as 77WN). SIA runs the 77WNs on selected routes (of which LHR is one, NRT is another) but as always you are at risk of aircraft substitution to a normal 77W with the older style Business Class seat.

    • Alex says:

      Edited to add: MAN/MUC, and SIA’s other European destinations, are as far as I know not a 77WN route, so if you book out of anywhere but London in Europe you will probably end up with the old seat.

    • Alan says:

      Indeed, I ended up on one of these pretty old 77Ws on a SIN-MEL trip – quite grubby in fact (I was surprised at SQ in having this) and not a patch on the A380s. At least I received some KrisFlyer miles to compensate 😉

  • Daftboy says:

    I flew both the A380 and 77W on this route last December (i.e. the products above) and to my surprise didn’t particularly enjoy the 77W. It certainly looks stylish but I found it quite cramped and the bed to be not particularly comfortable. I sleep much more soundly on BA CW to be honest.

    I preferred the A380 which felt more spacious, but again the bed is wide but feels a bit cramped.

  • Will says:

    Raffles the seat you show is the second generation seat which is being fitted into the most recent 77W deliveries from Seattle. The seat you show as the 380 seat is actually the seat on the vast majority of 77W as well. You simply got lucky as sq have put the new 77W with the new seats on the LHR route first. So if you fly from MAN you will get the old 380 style seat.

    I guess that eventually the new seat will be retrofitted across the fleet.

  • Richard says:

    MAN-MUC would be a useful one for me, but last time I looked I struggled to get a sensible price (in economy) – any suggestions?

    • Rob says:

      Redeem! Not sure what the cheapest Star Alliance redemption option would be. If you have Amex points you could convert to SQ itself or SAS, not sure which is cheaper (Krisflyer has better availability).

  • BD says:

    Interesting that you almost don’t feel qualified to review the Business Class experience. I think the fact you slept for the overwhelming majority of the overnight flights is the best review any business class cabin could have. I think SQ will be happy with that.

    • James67 says:

      Agreed, for me excellence equates with duration of undisturbed sleep time. New seat looks much better than old one

  • James67 says:

    OT: currently onboard Etihad en route from EDI to AUH on an a330 200. In Y after declining £500 upgrade. Very pleasantly surprised. Bulkhead window seat is quite comfortable, vacant adjacent seat, satisfactory if small lunch, above average IFE and gret value fast wifi best of all. This wifi is what airlines should be aspiring to. Anybody with forthcoming etihad flight might want to consider getting a tmobilr hotspot account before they fly.

    • Ryan says:

      Just as OT but in the same area: I was on a BA flight LHR – SFO. They were trialling onboard WiFi. £5/h £10/24h. Provided by T-Mobile. Don’t know whether this is news or not but I can’t remember reading about it here.

      Didn’t try it myself; I used the time to catch up on reading.

    • stuart h says:

      hi James…ever since the devaluation news emerged ive been trying to remember who was trying out the EDI to AUH flight in y ….it sounds encouraging , it might be the way to go for me…. look forward to a full review 🙂 enjoy your holiday

      • James67 says:

        At the prices they are charging it is difficult to complain. The a330 from EDI was in the great 2-4-2 seat configuration and being only half full the cabin crew positively encouraged us to move around until we got comfortable. The seat itself I found reasonably comfortable, with decent recline and a forward moving base. Pitch was the typical 31-32 inches so I got away eith it being only 171cm tall. The avod screen was around 9 inches, some 30% bigger thanI recall from a decade ago. I liked that they has usb, rthernet and multisocket at every seat. WiFi was the icing on the cake to while away the hours. Meals were typical of what you would expect in Y but lunch at 10am feels weird. The 773ER to BKK was the same seat but in 10 across configuration cabin ambiance was much less pleasant. However, on the whole the journey was fine given each sector were only 7 and 6 hours respectively during daytime. Thev773 would be much less pleasant overnight or on 8hr+ journeys in Y. From EDI I think EY beats QR on schedule and aircraft. I was dreading these flights based on skytrax reviews but was pleasantly serprised to find it was not half as bad as I expected. In truth I got off the plane in better shape than I have some BA CW flights which was something of an eyeopener.

  • Nick W says:

    I flew LHR SiN return last year. Outbound was on the new 777 300ER. I found the wide seat uncomfortable as a seat and hopeless as a bed due to the narrow area for one’s feet. Another ridiculous feature was the table. It was just to left of my elbow when retracted, and you pushed it down slightly to get it to spring up and open. However it was far too sensitive and my arm kept touching it accidentally if I turned whilst sleeping and it would then pop up. Very annoying and other pasengers were having same problem. Crew said they were aware of issue and it was being looked into. Generally a poorly thought out seat. Return was on he older A380 where seat does not look so smart but is much more comfortable as both bed and seat. In future I will try to avoid Singapore flights on the new 777 300ER

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