Flying the A380- Singapore Airlines Trip Report (Part 2)

Once I had boarded & stowed all my stuff, I set about getting some pictures. As I hadn'tdone much long-haul flying as a passenger, I erred on the side of caution & requested an aisle seat. It was a bit annoying as I usually like a window seat for that reason, but the people sitting in my row were nice enough to let me lean over them to snap a few pics.




(The seat layout on the SQ 380 is 3-4-3 on main deck economy- I think it's the same for upper deck as well, though I only got a brief look)


I'd also like to add I really love the seat pockets- not only was there a section for the afore-pictured magazines & safety card, but additional elasticised pockets for iPod, camera, water bottle or whatever else one wants to cram in there. I could fit all the essentials near to hand without having to resort to rummaging in the overhead every 10 minutes.

Another neat feature (sadly forgot to photograph it) was the footrest. I found it a bit awkqard when sleeping, but good when I was awake watching tv,and wanting to take the weight off my feet. I think this might be better than the foot-net that Qantas have, but as I haven't yet tried that I can't be certain.

After take-off, the crew came around with a drinks service. Looking at the menu, I saw they were offering a Singapore Sling. Of course, I had to try it, in honour of my first trip on the SQ A380. I had thought it would be made with a pre-mix, but no, the friendly Singapore Girl mixed it all to order from the drinks cart:


That was really cool, but quite strong, so I also got a lemonade to have with the peanuts.


Next was our meal, which was really tasty. Again with the metal cutlery, which is kind of strange to see after dealing with plastic knives for so long! I ate pretty much everything, and then they gave out some icecream which was small pieces of icecream covered in chocolate. They were really good!

After lunch, most people went to sleep or watched movies, so I took the chance to have a wanfder around and look at the plane. I'm still kicking myself, at the time I felt like I was taking lots of photos but later when I looked at them I realised I didn't have any of the stair case or upper deck. Oh well, next time!



View out of the Right 5 door viewing window. The clouds were really cool, but they also gave us some turbulence. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I found it odd that the seatbelt sign didn't seem to be enforced. An announcement would be made, but after that people still got up and walked around with not really any interference from the crew. (They do things differently I guess!)

The plane nerd in me had to take a picture of this...
Airbus logo on each of the doors.



One for my flight attendant readers:
The door mechanism is a lot different from what we might be used to... although it does have similarities to others in the Airbus family.

Just think, it once took a week to make this trip! Now it's under 14 hours.



Getting there...


About an hour and a half before we arrived we also got a supper/dinner. This was chicken with noodles and was really good! Kind of like chicken noodle soup, but without the soup :P

And a few final 'plane geek' photos :)

The Heathrow Express train from Paddington to the airport. It's pretty high-tech, a lot like a plane itself. See the exit-row lighting, and the folding seats near the door which look like crew jumpseats. It even had wi-fi!! Took about 15mins to make the trip, which was well worth 16 pounds. (Hint: If you're crew, show your airline ID, the nice guy at the ticket counter gave me a crew ticket for 8 pounds!!)


The iPod connector on the seatback entertainment console:

The A380 also has AV input for a portable DVD or similar, and also allows you to view content from a USB stick like PDF files and Word documents. If you're not sure about what plane you're flying, or what facilities it has on board, check the airline website or the ever-handy Seat Guru website.


The IFE handset. The reverse side has a keyboard (for seat to seat messaging that hot guy ;) and gaming buttons for the multitude of games such as Mummy Mania and WHo Wants to Be A Millionaire. Hours of fun!

And I found this amusing:

The A380 is so big they give you a map to fiure out where your seat is!!!

Overall, I really enjoyed the flight and the crew were great- nothing was too much trouble. It's true- Singapore is a great way to fly!

Stay tuned for a Singapore Girl pic on the Galley Curtain blog =)

Trip Report- Flying the Skies With Singapore's A380 (Part 1)

Finally I'm in the mood to make a blog post, and seeing as my main theme of my blog is aviation, I thought I'd start with writing about what it was like to fly on the Airbus A380- giant of the sky.

Airline: Singapore Airlines (SQ)
Route: SIN-LHR (London Heathrow)
Aircraft: Airbus A388 (A380-800)



Before joining this flight, I had another sector with SQ from my home town to Singapore Changi Airport. Transit time was approximately 6 hours.

So many flights... and only about 3 or 4 hours out of the day!

On the flight up I traded watching tv for legroom, as the exit row at door R3 was unoccupied due to broken IFE. I asked one of the crew if I could sit there, and they were at first concerned I should know the tv's didn't work. When I assured them I was fine with it, they let me sit there, so I had the two seats to myself.

Strangely enough, I ended up receiving a special meal, even though I am neither Hindu or vegetarian, it ended up being tasty enough.

As a bonus, I got my meal before anyone else. If you tend to be hungry on flights, I recommend ordering a SM so you get to eat early. You will sit with your tray a bit longer too, though.

During my transit, I mostly looked around at the shops in the Terminal 3 transit mall. It certainly is a very traveller-friendly airport.

They had recharging stations for all possible gadgets (except USB for digital cameras, boo) a butterfly garden, free massage chairs and lots of other cool stuff.


Flowers in the butterfly house

Some really pretty butterflies, they were everywhere & there were lots of fake flowers with nectar pots in the middle to feed them.




The only thing lacking for an airplane nerd like me was a proper observation deck. The windows were big but didn't afford a view of the entire landing runway. I still got some good pics though.

SQ Boeing 777


QF A380

After lots of waiting around, we were finally ushered into the new boarding lounge which included gates for the A380.


While there, I tried to get a pic of my SavvyNavigator bag tag. Sadly the cool ones got corrupted on my camera card so this is the best of the remaining shots.
(Yes that is the A380 engines you can see in the background)

Our crew assembling to board the plane. I counted about 23 all up, that's a big crew!


After being welcomed on board & settling in, hot towels were passed out before take off which was a nice change. After departure we were given the amenity kits. Oddly, they had no eye shades, which I thought was really strange. Just some airplane socks & a small toothbrush. Of course I souvenired them for later, maybe I'll use them for a give-away later on.


As this is quite a big post, I'll write the rest of this one in the next day or two.

When "Being Helpful" Really Isn't

Sitting at the desk in my hotel room, listening to the baby in the room next door cry. It's not so much the crying that's the problem, but the fact that whenever I turn up the tv to drown out the noise, the baby cries even more. The walls in this joint are too darn thin! I mean I'm trying to watch a tv show at regular volume, for goodness' sake! I shouldn't be able to hear the baby as though it's in the bathroom. (Hang on, is there a baby in the bathroom? Nope- just checked, in case)

The tv show in question was one I just happened upon by chance, called 'Drop Dead Diva'. Basically, hot shallow girl dies & gets reincarnated into the body of a mousy lawyer. Hilarity ensues. Well, I didn't think it was that bad, so given that I remember to watch regular tv next week, and not just cable, I'll watch it again. Just to see what happens.

I was getting a bit hungry by the time the show ended, so I headed to a nearby convenience store to get some supplies. This is proving kind of hard as at the moment I'm on a diet- of sorts. No eating carbs after 8pm. Which is harder than it sounds. Given that I've never really been on a diet in my life, it's proving to need willpower. Out of the multitude of choices there I settled on the least evil of spicy capsicum dip (2g of carbs per 100g) and celery sticks. I don't think celery has carbs, but even if it does, I'm sure I read somewhere that you use up more energy eating it than you get out of it, anyway.

Okay. So, first leg of the trip went pretty well. Crew were nice, which is always good. One of them slightly crazy, but in a good way. She was really funny. Even had a show & tell of her tattoo in the rear galley! I was in charge of the emergency exits for this flight. I had all seats full, so I did the briefing. Then the final passenger to board tells me that someone is sitting in his seat. It's in the exit row. I check all of the boarding passes, just to make sure that no-one got past 3 card checks onto the wrong flight. (Don't laugh, it has happened once or twice!)

Turns out a guy sitting in the exit row is meant to be in a different row. Since his friend is in the row in front, he thought they were sitting behind each other, and misread his boarding card. Happens a lot on this type of aircraft as the seat rows kind of sit above the seat backs, so heaps of people confuse row 13 for row 12. The guy sitting in the wrong seat is actually a well-known football player. Normally they love the exit seats for the extra leg room. But, he didn't get that seat, the other guy did, and he wanted his allocated seat. Fair enough. So I had to eexplain why he needed to move, and he seemed okay. Later, I thanked him for being understanding, and he said no worries. He then said he thought I might have brought him a meal from business class to make up for it. Make up for what, I thought. Seeing as there was no mistake on my part, there was nothing to make up for! If he had wanted an exit seat, he should have booked it. The other guy had every right to ask me to move him. Pffft, so funny!

The service went fine, aside from one or two things. One guy, who seemed to think he needed his beer quicker than anyone else, and wanted seconds before we had even finished serving the rest of the cabin, and a guy in a family of tray stackers. My fellow FAs shudder here, because they know what this means.

For my non-airline-savvy readers, let me explain. When passengers travel in a group, and they finish the meal, sometimes they think they will be nice & helpful and stack everything up in a pile, like at home when you take dishes from the dining table. That's all well & good, except it isn't actually helpful to us. When we pass out trays, they come from inside the meal cart (or trolley) which contains racks, kind of like inside the oven. Each 'slot' in the cart has room for one row of trays (whether that's 2 or 3 or 4).

On your tray, you have a meal, the cutlery, a cup and maybe a snack or other dessert item.

Each utensil, cup & dish is a specific shape & height to fit into the tray itself & also into the trolley, without disturbing the trays above and below it.

When people stack trays, what they tend to do is this: remove everything from the trays, and stack each tray on top of the other. Then, place all the dishes in a pile, the cups in a pile, and so on, putting these piles on top of the stack of trays, creating a nice little mountain of airline-logoed plastic. Often, a scrumpled napkin serves as a crown to this epic masterpiece.


Unfortunately, this stack of traydom doesn't fit in the trolley, and everything has to go back in the way it came out. There's usually no extra room anywhere. So what must happen? FA collecting trays must first take one empty tray & place it in the trolley, then place one set of utensils on that tray, and repeat, until all trays are back in original, yet empty, order inside the trolley. Add to this process a quick flight, full aircraft, and a 70% loading of 'stackers' out of the passengers on board, and you might begin to understand why your FA looks slightly grumpy when you hand her your little Mt Everest of stacked trays after dinner. We know you're trying to be helpful, but really you're not, you just create more mess for us to clean up. We know it's our job, but it makes it that much easier if you try to return everything how it was given to you. We expecially love this when it comes to blankets (folded on the seat is great), and if you cross your own seatbelt, well, you've just made crew friends for life! I can always pick a non-revving airline staff member- they're the one who leaves the seat pocket neat, with safety card facing out, and their seatbelt crossed when they leave! (Don't get me started on military charters- pure flight attendant bliss! It's tidy-airplane heaven! =)

Anyway, back to the dad. He had finished creating this masterpiece, but as is often the case, it was unevenly stacked. Just as we were about to reach his row to collect the trays, it crashed down around the place, sending cups and bread crumbs all over. Immediately he blamed my colleague for knocking it over. I felt like saying I saw it fall before we even got there, but you know, customer is always right, blah blah blah. It was so funny, colleague's face was hilarious. She was making faces as she couldn't be seen! I had to try clean it up without laughing. She said sorry to me, for having to pick it all up, but Mr Stacker thought she was apologising to him, and told her that so she should. The cheek...

The moral of the story? Hand back thy tray as thou would like thy tray handed back to you!

Believe it or not, there's even a Facebook group dedicated to the FA peeve of stacked trays!

The Exorcist- Or, Kevin Really Didn't Like His Dinner

There's so much to blog about since I last did an in-depth post, that I don't really know where to begin.

So, let's start with every crewmember's favourite- Vomit. (Note- this post is not for the squeamish- so read at your own risk)

It all began fairly normally. The flight was a cross-country red-eye. We started out with a bbit of a delay in the terminal, which of course the passengers loved at that time of night. Most of them were ok, and boarding for once went pretty quickly, with only a few of the usual hiccups that happen on a widebody plane when it's full in back AND front. Of course there were one or two of the 'I fly all the time & I ALWAYS have four bags with me' type, but I handballed that one to the gate agents, as I feel they need more practise at this issue in this port, and need to stop leaving it for me to deal with!

The flight was absolutely chockers in economy, with a few passengers not happy that they didn't get their preferred seats. The good thing is, each boarding pass shows a 'sequence number', which tells us how far down the queue they checked in. So the ones who try to fib and say they checked in early, when we know they were 3rd last on a full Boeing, don't get far with the complaints when we tell them we know they checked in after all the aisle & window seats were gone. Sure, you hate that seat, but SOMEONE has to get it, and you were number #257 to check in. Sorry buddy.

We got through the service, which consists of a cart service serving hot meals & drinks, followed along by the tea & coffee. Lots of wine drinkers on this flight. Usually are a lot on red-eye flights, particularly on cross-country flights, because the drinks are free. Some of course try to take advantage, and ask 6 different crew for the same drink, but we are on to that! :p

After the service, we turned down the lights so people could sleep. I had done a water & juice round with one of the other crew, and I was just leaving the mid galley curtains to go to the aft galley when a kid came running up the aisle toward me. At first, I thought Kevin was just being one of those kids who has to run around the plane annoying people. As the kid got closer though, I could see he was crying. My next thought was 'lost child'- happens all the time on such big planes.

Then I noticed Kevin was crying AND holding something rather disgusting. Yep- Kevin's cupped hands were full of vomit (EW). One look at Kevin & I knew the vomit volcano was about to blow. No way was I letting that kid get in the galley to puke his little guts all over our crew haven- we still had a good 4 hours to go!

I whipped Kevin around quick smart and pushed him towards the lavs, telling him "Go to the toilet, quickly mate!" As we rushed back down the aisle, Kevin could contain it no more.


Bleeeeeuaaaaarghhhhhhh..... all over row 34. I grab his head and hold it down so any more spew goes on the floor, and not on my unfortunate pax, who look as though they are about to do the same. It's like one of these dreams where you're running but getting nowhere- the lav looks a thousand miles away, and Kevin is still puking for all he's worth. The pax sit there like stunned deer, not hearing or ignoring my demands to give me a sick bag. Fine- we soldier on, and finally get to the lav, only it's locked. I whip Kevin inboard, towards the disabled lav, which, thank god, is blissfully empty. Ufortunately, he throws up right as I do this, so the crossover & a good portion of the floor at Doors 3 is covered in sick. I fling open the door & the lid of the toilet right as Kevin goes again- except instead of doing as I thought, Kevin considerately decides to throw up in the basin instead. Guess we can consider this bathroom useless for the rest of the flight. Poor engineer, well someone has to get the chunks out of the drain right?

I leave him to it, and pop my head around the bulkheead, ding a call bell 3 times, and when I see a crew's face appear around the rear galley curtain, I hold up my hands & wave my fingers, mouthing the word GLOVES!!

The other crew arrive brandishing gloves & antiseptic wipes. One goes off in search of Kevin's parents, while the other cheerfully informs me that 15 rows worth of the plane aisle is covered in the remnants of Kevin's supper. Lovely. Just then a rather steamed frequent flyer decides to tell me I am not doing my job because the aisle is full of vomit. I apologise and explain that my hands are rather full. Right at that moment, Kevin emerges from the toilet and pukes all over the guy's shoes.

Have to give the little tacker a 10/10, I haven't seen that much sick come from one person ever, much less a 5 year old. I don't know, he must have eaten more than his dinner to end up like that!

In hindsight, it was kind of funny.

Not Quite What You'd Expect...

I got this picture from a friend, it's an airline safety card. Now along with the usual safety info like slides, exits and liffejackets, it has the part which says no electronic devices & which items you can never have.

In the 'Prohibited' range are things like remote control cars, walkies talkies and certain toys. This airline has chosen a rather funny way of illustrating this:


Remember these cute, yet frustratingly annoying little bastards?


Now I'm not sure how many of them had to make it on board to annoy the hell out of the flight attendants to get banned, but I do know it had to be quite a few! (Joking- they are never allowed, and thank god for that!!)


Imagine Sydney to LA hearing "Furby doo-moh kkoh-koh A-tay!" the whole way over. It's enough to make one stab ones own eardrums with a first class fork!

In-flight iPods & Medical Emergencies

Hey all,

I'm feeling a little too drained at the moment to do a proper update. Have had a huge past week at work, not least of which involved some medical emergencies. (Last time it was SHB's turn, now it seems, it's mine.)

I promise I will post in more detail, once I've had a chance to rest up.It's just a hugely big weekend at the moment, being Australia Day and everything. (Our version of July 4th, for my US readers.)

Yesterday I dropped my sister in at work, the funny thing was, passing one of the major hotels I just about ran over two of SkyHighBoy's colleagues, who weren't watching before crossing the road. Oops! That could have been a nasty flight delay!

In news for travellers, Singapore Airlines have announced new technology to allow iPod & iPhone connectivity inflight. Pretty cool news for travellers. Other airlines, including Emirates and Delta, are said to be following suit.