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Europe 2024: THE Suites
posted : Saturday, December 14, 2024
So of course this gets a post on its own because of the magnitude of its significance. And the whole experience including the pre-trip lounge run took up a full 24 hours and then some so that’s like a destination on its own already.
I’ve been saying this for a while but when I first got into the miles game, my ultimate goal was to fly on the SQ Suites, on the longest flight possible. This used to be New York (albeit including a stopover at Frankfurt), but a year back they axed the second half of the route (i.e. the A380 now only services the route that ends at Frankfurt, the one to New York via Frankfurt is being serviced by another plane). Which leaves London as the route where I can theoretically can get the most out of the whole experience. And I guess it’s also for the better because redemption to Europe requires less miles than to North America, understandably, so I was able to reach my target earlier. And along the way to speed things up I also decided that two way Suites may be too extravagant so I stuck to one way Suites (F), one way Business (J). Initially toyed around with the idea of J to LHR and F for the return leg, rationalizing that The Private Room (which is exclusive to SQ first class passengers only) is accessible even if you are an arriving passenger (so I get to go to lounge before and after flight!) but scrapped that idea in lieu of a full day experience in TPR instead. (Oh boy I got a feeling this will be a long article already) Suites redemption costs 225k miles for an Advantage redemption, because SQ know their worth and does not release Saver redemption tickets for such highly sought after routes (there are Suites Saver redemption to Mumbai, draw your own conclusions). Business Saver are not difficult to snag if you camp early enough, which brings me to the next point - because the LHR route is so highly sought after, you need to grab them the moment they are open for redemption, which is 8am at T-355 days. I initially considered May 2024, thinking I can maybe catch Roland Garros or something (which maybe features a Nadal match in a final lol), then I thought why not Paris Olympics in Aug 2024, but in either case I hadn’t accumulated enough miles at the T-355 mark. Signing up the UOB Ladies card in July 2023 was a total game changer because it gave me 6 miles per dollar spent (albeit on two categories only) and finally tip my balance over the mark, and so I settled for October 2024 as a travel period because, public holiday. Thus began a period where I religiously monitor availability and forecast trends - for instance, I noticed SQ also does not release Suites tickets for weekend travels (well they do, but it goes straight to a waitlist which people with higher frequent flyer status gets first dibs on), and best chance is weekday travel. And rehearsed the whole booking process hahaha this reminds me of fighting for concert tickets. When the day came, was thrown another surprise - the tickets did not open as scheduled. And not just this route, any other route, any other class. Thought it was a glitch which happened on this day of all days, then after that read up a bit and found out that this is the exact day where airlines cleared their schedule for the northern hemisphere winter season - and usually they will be a delay in opening up tickets for sale which can take a couple of days. Adds an uncertainty because the extent of delay is unpredictable, unlike your usual 8am timeline. Meaning it can be uploaded at a 2.59pm 3 days later, with availabilities for all three days that they have missed.
Sigh. Which means regular checking over the next couple of days to see if it has been uploaded, religiously checking the MileLion telegram chat if anybody has updates, and even then when it finally got released, the exact date I wanted had gone onto waitlist zzzz. So change of plans, picked a Tuesday morning flight instead but I got it in the end! Booking the return leg was uneventful, basically just stroll in and redeemed it because well it’s “just” business. As excited as I was, there was still one long year before the flight so the excitement dissipated over time. Until July, that is. Details of how my sister got on this trip, I’ve shared earlier. So one year meant there’s room for changes to happen. Change of flight equipment (for instance, some planes are sent for maintenance and now they had to redeploy the A380 somewhere else), rescheduling or cancellation of flight, all can threaten your coveted seat. Change of flight equipment rarely happens for the London route again because it is apparently one of SQ’s cash cows so they get priority over other routes (Shanghai, Hong Kong for instance). But it was the second scenario that I got hit with. SQ decided to cancel the morning flight for the particular week I was booked on (sigh, again, just for that particular week. They also cancelled a corresponding return flight for that week, and it was the exact flight I was on, but I dodged the bullet for this one). I got a call while I was in a meeting and I ignored it, then I think 10 minutes later the sister texted me with an email screenshot stating that she has been moved to another flight on the same day. Meanwhile I haven’t received any email yet, and I decided to google the phone number that called me and true enough, that was from SQ. Hahah maybe Suites passenger gets personal phone calls to reschedule first rather than being unceremoniously moved around like Economy. But maybe it’s this line of thought that I ultimately paid a price for, because I kind of forgot that I am not the only Suites passenger they have. So what happened was I decided not to call back and wait for them to call me again, and that eventually happened the next day. The price I paid? There are very limited availability by the time they got to me the next day. I was very constrained - I had already booked my flight to Switzerland and in fact all my accommodations at various cities, non refundable rates, so I can only be moved to earlier dates, not later dates. Then there are also only two flights a day that I can be moved to, instead of 4, because only these two are A380s. And there is also the matter of the sister only arriving in Sg on Sunday evening, so realistically there’s only three choices: Sunday late night, Monday morning, Monday late night. I can’t remember details now but I think Monday morning seats are full, and Monday late night only had one Suites seat left. And so I ended up taking the Monday late night flight instead. The pros? I get almost an extra full day in London and I don’t need to worry too much about missing a connection to Geneva. The cons? Because there was only one seat left, it wasn’t the best seat. Yes, the 6 Suites seats are built differently - this is the smallest Suite. The other 5 had been taken up, presumably some by the affected passengers who got the call before I do because I chose not to pick up at the first instance. And because it’s a night flight, some time will be spent sleeping, which I kind of want to avoid because well, maximizing experience. Oh well. It is what it is, and at the end of the day it is still a Suites seat. Fast forward to flight day! Part of the experience is also the lounge before flight, and because Changi is SQ’s home ground, it has a more elaborate set up - including The Private Room exclusive for its own first class passengers only. There’s a separate First Class lounge for other first class passengers on Star Alliance flights too and also +1s of first class passengers, and actually with the golden ticket you can access any other lounges including business class lounge etc, which was my initial plan - but eventually I figured TPR was good enough and I don’t have enough stomach anyway. But I did specially take an extra day of leave just for this. And the experience actually begins before that - from a private drop off area at T3, exclusive check in space, immigration counters…photos to tell the story!  Exclusive first class check in lounge at T3, even though we indicated this when booking Grab, driver still (almost) missed it (it’s a turn right before the regular doors) because I guess he didn’t pay too much attention to the map and directions and I don’t blame him  Fancy chill place that resembles more of a hotel check in lobby, away from the hustle and bustle of the main terminal…to be honest, you wouldn’t be spending too much time here but it’s nice (probably nicer if they serve a drink or something) At this point I wanted to add on a story about interlining our luggage - our final destination was of course Geneva booked separately on Swiss Air, from London. When you have separate tickets and itinerary (on a different airline some more) I think the expectation is to have to collect your luggage on arrival and re-check in. But Swiss Air is part of Star Alliance and I thought there should be an interlining agreement, i.e. they can check your luggage through to your final destination. There are some technicalities behind the process which is a bit too complicated for me to understand and share. Decided to go down to SQ office one day to see if they could help me combine my tickets into a single itinerary and they said it cannot be done, but asked me to ask the ground staff instead when I check in. So here we are, and of course I exercised this privilege and asked the staff to see if he could help with this, and voila - luggage checked through to Geneva. And the same was done for the sister who tagged along for the check in because we are on the same flight. That saved us the trouble of finding somewhere to store our luggage while we explore London.  Mandatory passport shot - and I have a few of these - but the point is the exclusive immigration for First Class passengers, just after exiting the checkin lounge. I can’t imagine they see heavy footfall throughout the day and it’s still a manual counter, so poor immigration officer stationed here who must be bored out of her mind throughout the day.  Heading up past the iconic mural to SQ’s trinity of lounges in T3.  The golden ticket to The Private Room!  The centrepiece of the lounge  The dining area  Let’s start with some champagne shall we.  I arrived shortly before breakfast service ends, so staff told me I can order off both the breakfast menu and lunch menu lol. But there’s only so much stomach space so I didn’t order too many things (I also wanted the congee) but laksa is a must order in any of the Changi lounges (they are all catered by SATS). And the TPR version is of course a zhng-ed up version with lobster lol.  Satay off the lunch menu, order as many sticks as you want.  Dim sum platter  Crispy seafood noodles with king prawns and scallops  And oh this was unexpectedly good - warm chocolate fondant with ice cream  More resting areas and work zones Adjourned to the FCL coz I can’t just leave the sister alone can I. But I realize now I don’t have photos of the lounge haha. So buffet menu will do (where I took a few items to try) We left the lounge after this to embark on an exploration of all three terminals lol. To walk off all the food and also because we had a lot of time to kill. And actually took us a good two hours to cover all three terminals, but I was already feeling sort of tipsy (champagne, seriously?) and head was throbbing. So headed back to the lounges in search of this.  TPR’s nap rooms! There are four of them, sources say you can camp overnight (if your flight is the next day) even though TPR officially closes between 2-5am each day, they usually won’t chase you out. If they do though, you can try grabbing one room at the FCL instead - which now has beds too when I visited, because online sources say the FCL ones only have armchairs (although it’s a good armchair but still)  Star of the room - the Tempur bed  Which has this zero gravity setting. Napped for almost a couple of hours hoping that headache will go away in time because I want to be at my best for my Suites flight  That nap and a shower did the trick I guess - progressively better  Shower amenities provided  Returned to the dining area for dinner - three meals in TPR ftw! Had to decline alcohol in case I got tipsy again, and wanting something warm so got a decaf coffee instead  And continuing the trend of warm food, got this Duo sweet corn with pork ribs soup for starter  And steamed "Kuhlbarra" barramundi with superior HK soya sauce for mains. Dinner menu is largely similar to lunch with a few different items, and I had to restrain myself a bit because I still have a rather full supper to come  Ask for some fruits which is not on the menu, and staff overdid themselves (okay I think they just went out to the FCL to curate this plate lol)  Hung out outside at the FCL with the sister after dinner, and had to say no to more drinks at the bar. Then we decided to go for yet another walk before our 1120pm boarding time…so that sadly brings the TPR experience to an end! I will be back one day. Up next, the actual Suites flight. Whew this has been a long post, I know.  First to board of course, aero bridge brings you directly to the upper deck of the A380  The almost indescribable feeling to see this in flesh. The other 5 suites were also full - I monitored up to the last possible minute to see if there’s a chance to swap - but alas. 3 elderlies and 2 younger ones, and all 5 just asked for bed to be set up after we hit cruising altitude. FA told me they were all seasoned travelers who probably don’t give a hoot on extracting every last bit of value from the $12k I presume they are paying in cash lol.  Welcome drink, I am still afraid of getting tipsy so I got juice instead. Lame haha.  Menu and the Bang&Olufsen noise canceling headphones  Offered champagne once we hit cruising altitude, and I can’t refuse. People who know their stuff say this is good stuff, well I am honestly not well versed enough to tell. Suite tour!  And the feasting begins, starts with a caviar course for first class passengers only.  Garlic bread, and some cheese puff I think  Need a close up shot of this.  Fatal mistake of not taking a picture of menu so a couple months down the road, already forgot what starter this is - but it is a jelly texture with cured (insert meat)  Didn’t go for BTC for the first meal because the main looked interesting enough - Georges Blanc’s pot something chicken (sorry, i really thought I noted down the menu somewhere but turns out I didn’t!). Sauce was quite interesting and chicken was pretty tender so that’s a win for an inflight meal.  Lemon pound cake with raspberry sauce was a bit disappointing though, wished I had asked for other desserts or cheese plate too lol but yeah it was almost 3am by now. So this was also the part where the FA came and asked if there’s anything he could do for me before he hand over to his colleague for a bit while he goes down to help out in the lower deck a bit - so I asked if the sister could come up for a visit. I don’t think it’s a unique request but can definitely sense a bit of panic in him, he said he could go down and escort her up personally after checking details with me (the sister’s seat number) and also gently cautioned that she can’t stay too long, we need to keep our volumes down too coz the other 5 were sleeping. Which made me a bit guilty for whatever reasons but after a while he did bring her up (though i managed to give the sister a heads up in time, the wifi was still working okay at this point). So she got to hung out a bit, talked a bit and honestly there’s nothing much for us to do also - it was also getting late (330am) so she got escorted down after that and I went off to change. The famous toilet. Took me two tries to get in because for some reason one of the other 5 happened to be inside when I wanted to go (I thought y’all are sleeping?!)  Changed to the Lalique pyjamas which I brought home after.  Bed all set up! To take a video of them setting it up is a bit over the top I think. So I slept. And my intention was to maybe get 4-5 hours of sleep, which leaves me with another 5 hours awake to enjoy the suite aka exploit the FAs hahah just kidding. While it is not the most comfortable I feel - I think the bed is a bit narrow and people have been saying the conventional first class has wider sleeping space - but being able to lie flat makes a whole lot of difference in a plane despite me keeping the seat belt (bed belt?) on all the time. And so I fell asleep, pretty easily. And I ended up oversleeping. I didn’t think this could happen, on a plane no less, but I woke up a couple of times (partly because the other 5 have had their share of sleep and are starting to eat whatever meal that is, so there’s activity along the corridor with FAs moving around), checked the time and thought I only had 3 hours of sleep so far, and forced a couple more hours of sleep. Little did I know that my phone’s time zone got messed up - intermittent connection to wifi maybe causes it to shift time zones and at some point it had moved itself forward to a couple of hours ahead of SG time (when I slept, my phone was still in SG time zone). We’ve been warned that WiFi will not be available when flying above certain regions due to local restrictions but I didn’t think this would be the result - so when I first checked I actually had already clocked 5 hours of sleep while thinking I only did 3 hours. So after a couple more hours I happened to check the tablet instead of my phone just to see where we are, and got a rude shock when I realised there’s just 3 hours of flight time left. There goes my plan for a mid-flight refreshment (the carrot cake was something of a legend among the mile chaser group I am in) and so breakfast it is, after freshening up.  Coffee to start the day  Had asked for the bears the night before and gotten a pair, so here they are for the mandatory photo op.  Breakfast starts with fruit platter and yogurt, my preference over the likes of Bircher muesli  Another must do on a SQ premium flight - the lobster thermidor off the BTC menu, which I opted for over the breakfast options. And it was every bit as good as people described it to be.  Somehow this second meal also took almost an hour plus to finish and I went off to the second, smaller toilet to freshen up and change out of the pyjamas.  Asked for an amenity kit! Strangely not given up front and had to request for it, but while I am at it I asked if I could get a female version for the sister and FA went “let me see what I can do” before returning with one but gave me a “hush hush” sign. Honestly I think they can do it freely but just added the hush hush effect to give an impression that it’s above and beyond their service - I get the same reaction for the pair of bears the night before too.  Landing views  And very thick skinnedly asked for a photo. That concludes the Suites journey! Having watched countless materials on this it was very surreal to finally step into that space, yet it felt quite familiar all the same. Service was top notch, I think I was quite comfortable interacting with the crew, and maybe I could have milked more out of the experience but oh well, always a first time for everything. To think the ticket is selling at 12k, which is about $1k for every hour spent in sky lol. Will I spend that kind of money on an experience like this? Not something remotely possible at my current income level. But miles redemption is definitely very possible, and maybe this time it doesn’t have to be on the longest route possible. |
