Singapore Airlines 787-10 Business Class: Good But Not Great

We had a nice trip on Singapore Airlines business class in their 787-10 aircraft, and the price between DPS and SIN helped justify the trip.

Booking Singapore Airlines business class

I’ve already done a deep dive into the booking process for this flight, but a quick summary:

We needed to get from Bali, Indonesia over to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
While there are nonstop options available, I had some Singapore KrisFlyer miles that would soon expire. I already extended these miles once, eliminating my ability to extend the points a second time.

Thus, my best option would be to just use those Singapore KrisFlyer miles before they expire. Thus, I booked a flight with a connection in Singapore on the way over to Kuala Lumpur. On the plus side, the flight only cost a total of 84,000 KrisFlyer miles for the four of us. Sometimes you look at the price for flying business class these days on Singapore Airlines and scoff at how bad it looks. Flying in South East Asia is much more affordable than the longhaul routes.

Earning Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles

If you reside in the United States, your best way to earn more Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles is to work the bank program transfers:

Most major bank transfer programs can convert points over to Singapore KrisFlyer (Amex, Capital One, Chase, Citi).
Thus, consider signing up for a credit card in one of those programs. Singapore Airlines does not have a cobranded card in the United States.

While you could also credit your Star Alliance flights to Singapore Airlines to earn miles, we wouldn’t consider this to be a quick method to earn more miles in their program.

Unfortunately, you’re going to need 1,000 miles in your account these days to search for Singapore Airlines award seats.

First impressions of Singapore Airlines 787-10 business class

We arrived at Ngurah Rai International Airport (DPS) shortly after 8AM local time. Since we were traveling internationally, we headed to the rear towards Departures A-B. Our flight would depart shortly after 10AM.

Happily, there wasn’t much of a wait at the check-in desk. Granted, it wouldn’t have been that long of a wait for us anyways while in business class, but no one wants to wait in a line.

From there, we proceeded through immigration control and waited in the Tujuwan Lounge for a bit. Afterwards, we left the lounge and walked through some more shops on our way to the gates. They sure do have some interesting decor here in Bali.

Naturally, by the time we arrived, everyone seemed to be in line to board. While there was supposed to be an orderly boarding process by zone, it seemed like the line had a mind of its own. It moved fast at least! So much for my opportunity to buy some Bali Banana gear from the store nearby.

Onboard the Singapore Airlines 787-10

Once we made it through the check-in process, we were presented with two doors for boarding. As we were in business class, we proceeded through the first door into the business class section. There was no first class section on this plane.

This is where you will have to forgive me a little, as with the rush of boarding I didn’t have as much time to take better photos. Maybe something was just off for me this day. As we’re traveling as a family of four, we took two pairs of middle seats. The Singapore Airlines Boeing 787-10 business class cabin is in a 1-2-1 layout.

Singapore Airlines 787-10 business class

Soon enough, we got the kids settled into their seats. It always feels easier just to get the kids situated before worrying about ourselves.

The Singapore Airlines 787-10 business class seat

This isn’t the most comfortable seat out there, but keep in mind that Singapore Airlines generally uses the 787-10 on flights shorter than 7 hours. The odds that you’ll need this seat on a redeye isn’t as large as some of their other large plane types. Case in point, you’ll only have three positions to place the seat in: upright for takeoff, landing, and taxiing; lounging mode (as seen below), and bed mode. Simple seat design, but hard to complain when you have this on a 3 hour flight from DPS.

The middle seats vary between the lovebird setting not-in-love setting (is there a name for the other arrangement?). Rows 11, 14, 16, 18, and 20 (not quite all even seats) have the lovebird setting but come with a divider between the seats in case you really don’t want to look at who you sit next to.

Rows 12, 15, 17, and 19 have the seats further apart but no divider between the seats. You could just walk on through the seats if you want to. If you’re sitting next to your child, it’s still easier to be in the lovebird setup especially during takeoff, landing, and taxi.

Next to your head are some individual lights if you need them.

And then on the other side from the lights is a storage compartment with headphones, power outlets, and bottled water.

Power outlets, bottled water, headphones

The headphones aren’t all that special but they worked well enough for the short journey without hurting my ears.

Below that, you’ll find the handheld remote and headphone connection.

That black void above the handheld remote is actually where you’ll find seat controls, lighting options, and the pager to get the flight attendant. It just wasn’t illuminated in the photo above.

For some reason, I didn’t get a good photo of my own monitor, so you’ll have to settle for Alex’s monitor in front of mine. It seemed plenty large enough for the journey.

In front of you, below the monitor itself, you’ll find the tray table that extends out and a decently tall footwell.

When you extend the bed into lie-flat mode, you’ll feel well-enveloped in a cocoon when in the lovebird seats. You’re a little more exposed in the other seat type. Unlike other planes, there are no suite doors on this plane in business class, but I think that’s overrated anyways.

Above the seats are just lights and overhead storage. You won’t find any individual air nozzles here, even above the window seats.

Amenities in Singapore Airlines (intra-Asia) business class

When we boarded, the flight attendants offered us a pre-departure beverage (champagne, orange juice, and I believe a bellini). I chose a glass of champagne, which I didn’t get a good picture of since I was still focused more on the kids.

At our seats when we showed up were a pillow and blanket. The blanket seemed thick enough, especially since we weren’t on a redeye. There is no extra mattress topper here.

The flight attendants also handed out some children’s headphones to the kids. The smaller size can work better for their heads than the adult versions already at the seat.

You might notice there is no mention of an amenity kit in business class. That’s right–Singapore Airlines doesn’t hand out amenity kits to business class customers on flights shorter than about 6 hours. Since this one clocked in at 3 hours, we don’t get a kit. Honestly, I think that’s fair. Kits are really helpful if you expect to sleep on the flight.

However, the kids got a pseudo-amenity kit for being a kid. These Zootopia notebooks helped keep them occupied on this trip (they even fought about them at home afterwards). Inside are stickers, activity pages, and blank pages for them to jot down their notes. You’ll also get some colored pencils to keep.

On top of that, they get a pencil pouch to store their colored pencils and whatever else they want to keep. As a parent, this is helpful!

The food in Singapore Airlines business class

The menu

As we were departing Bali, we had the option of Singapore Airlines’ “Book the Cook” selections before departure. However, there were no options on our flight that were exclusive to online ordering. Every single entree that appeared online could be ordered in the cabin. The only exception of note is the standard list of dietary options and children’s options.

Welcome to World Class message — *Welcome message*

Entrees — *Breakfast for those leaving Singapore, lunch for those leaving Bali*

Lunch

Our flight departed at 10:10AM and reached cruising altitude at 10:23AM. I will base all the times off the earlier timestamp.

Even before takeoff, we received a hot towel from the flight attendants. If you’ve been on Singapore Airlines before, you’d know how incredibly hot these are.

At 10:38AM (28 minutes after departure), the beverage cart came through with drinks. Given the shorter flight, you don’t get too many choices, but Charles Heidsieck isn’t a bad champagne at all.

Over the course of the meal, I ended up with a nice collection of drinks. A glass of Charles Heidsieck, a glass of the Kopke tawny port, and a glass of water.

At 10:41AM (31 minutes after departure), we received a tray containing an appetizer and a dessert. Since it’s a 3 hour flight, you’re not going to get multiple courses. Instead, it’ll be short an efficient. Immediately afterwards, we received our choice of bread from the bread basket. Always choose the garlic bread–so soft and it always tempts me to just eat the whole loaf.

The appetizer is a seared tuna salad with a nice piece of fish on it that’s not tough to eat. And the dessert was a banana cheesecake, though the consistency reminded me more of banana pudding.

At the same time, the kids meal appeared for our daughter Char. Her appetizer was fruit and dessert was some pudding. Conveniently, the kids also receive an assortment of snacks–something she decided to eat first before touching the rest of her food. Because kids.

Almost immediately afterwards, she received her entree: fried chicken tenders, rice, and vegetables. A tasty kids meal that many kids would find perfectly acceptable. If your child wants something else, Singapore Airlines also offers an Asian version of the kids meal and a vegetarian version too. Leave it to Singapore to offer up several choices for the kids.

At 10:55AM (45 minutes after departure), we received our entrees. The choices for this flight were:

Pan-fried chicken breast
Gulai Ikan (fish curry)
Beef noodles in black pepper sauce

Among the remaining three of us, we ordered both the Gulai Ikan and the beef noodles.

The beef noodles are excellent and very filling. The noodles have good texture, which can be hard to get while up in the air without a true kitchen on-site. And the beef is very tender. If you use the sauce, the dish becomes a little spicy, but not too bad if you’re averse to heat.

Jenn ordered the Gulai Ikan, which was arguably tastier than the beef noodles. Who wouldn’t like yellow curry with some flaky white fish? Even the rice is good and fluffy. Either route you choose is a good choice.

By 11:18AM (1 hour, 8 minutes after departure), meal service ended. That gave us about an hour and a half before landing to enjoy ourselves on the flight.

Wi-Fi and Entertainment

Singapore Airlines offers unlimited free Wi-Fi to passengers seated in Suites Class, First Class, and Business Class. Everyone else… just needs a free KrisFlyer account. It’s nice when Wi-Fi is free as long as it’s fast enough with everyone using it concurrently. I didn’t notice material slowdown aboard the flight.

The entertainment system is pretty good. Comparing against the other Asian carriers we flew on this trip (Garuda Indonesia and Malaysia Airlines), the system here on the 787-10 was tops. You have a wide collection of movies from oldies to more recent films.

Or, you could decide to watch a variety of TV series. You’ll have some opportunity to binge, but obviously you won’t get a chance on a 3 hour flight.

Lastly, you have Live TV options. That’s useful for catching sports in this part of the world but not if you’re looking for something back in the United States or in Europe.

Right before landing, you can also check out connections on your monitor. In our case, we got to see where our connection to Kuala Lumpur would depart from (Gate E10 in Terminal 2).

Service

We’ve had some excellent service on Singapore Airlines on past trips. This time, service was nice but it wasn’t anything extraordinary. I’m tempted to peg it as just because it’s a shorter flight, but we’ve been on shorter flights before and service still seemed to shine more. That said, the 737-8 we’ve flown before, which is also a short flight, also had a much smaller business class cabin. Thus, I’m more likely to just say that the cabin size doesn’t permit the usual exemplary service.

And that’s fine. Not every flight needs to be a winner.

Arrival to Singapore (SIN)

We arrived in Singapore Changi Airport after an extra 10 minutes of congestion getting to the gate. Once off the plane, we were free to move about the airport. If you haven’t landed at Singapore before on a connection, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

If you’re not leaving the secure area, you don’t need to worry about immigration procedures.
Security is at each gate, not centralized before you enter the secure area. Thus, don’t fill your water bottle expecting to take it onto your next flight.

Once off the plane, we took a shuttle that took us from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2. And we had a moment to briefly visit one of the SilverKris Lounges…

Recommendation: Yes, for the price

Sure, it’s easy of me to say this is a “no brainer” redemption for me. After all, my Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles were expiring and this was a good use of them. But even if my stash wasn’t expiring, I’d still consider this routing at the price. At 21,000 miles per person for a comfortable business class flight, this is a steal compared to what you get in the U.S.

And while the service and comfort wasn’t up to the usual high expectations we had from Singapore Airlines, it’s still good. It just didn’t stand out compared to the excellent Garuda Indonesia flight we had right before this one. But as they say, price is king.

food.wada.travel

experiencing the world via gastronomy with our children