Super Attentive Singapore Airlines First Class to Brunei
This review will look an inter-Asia Singapore Airlines First Class to Brunei on one of their oldest First Class configurations, the Boeing 777-300. These few birds now exclusively fly only short routes such a Jakarta.
This was a pretty last minute flight. I was in Vietnam and looking at cash flights to Brunei. The most convenient flights seemed to be with Singapore Airlines via Singapore at the time hovering around £260. For flights under 4/5 hours, I am more than happy to fly economy, but I decided to check out any award tickets in Business, that’s when I found First Class availability for just 27.5k Krisflyer miles on Singapore’s website. I decided to visit a friend in Singapore the night before on a cash SilkAir flight.
Flight Details
Route: Singapore – Bandar Seri Begawan
Date: 12.12.2019
Flight No: SQ182
Departure Time: 08:40
Aircraft: 777-300
Seat: 1A First Class
Date: 12.12.2019
Flight No: SQ182
Departure Time: 08:40
Aircraft: 777-300
Seat: 1A First Class
Check in
As an early flight for me, I arrived at the airport just 1 hour 40 minutes before departure. Check in easy at Singapore’s dedicated First Class reception area, as they call it.
You are greeted by the entrance and your bags unloaded and taken for you for check-in, then you are seated while check-in was done for you. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to take pictures. It was almost like going straight into a lounge, but not! Within a couple of minutes I was whisked off through immigration.
Lounge
As a First Class passenger I was invited to the Private Room lounge which I had a short time to visit on this instance.
Boarding Singapore Airlines First Class to Brunei
As usual, security is done at each gates in Singapore Changi, where I proceeded to about 35 minutes before my flight.
Boarding was done through door 1. I was greeted at the door by two First Class crew members and escorted to my seat, 1A.
In fact I was informed I was the only First Class passenger today, so I had the choice of any seat in the entire First Class cabin! Well that was a First for me and boy was I delighted.
And to think they had a boarding bridge just for me! Felt very special indeed.
Singapore Airlines First Class Cabin & Seat
As is the hallmark of all Singapore’s premium seats, these first class seats are super wide!
You could literally fit two people in side by side!
The crew were very chatty and noticed me taking pictures, so offered to take pictures of me 🙂
I was impressed by the size and quality of the IFE screen though, which looked newer than the old A380s. So I get the impression it may have been subsequently refurbished or tarted up.
There were noise cancelling headphones already in the seat (same ones as they use for new Suites!)
Going onto the seat controls definitely showed their age and was somewhat clunky to operate, even just to recline the seat seems a bit of an effort!
There was two storage boxes by the side of the windows as well as power sockets by the knees.
The seats are in a similar leather upholstery to the older A380s and colour scheme of the same palette.
As far as First Class goes, these seats are fairly open so not much privacy afforded, but this clearly is not an issue for short flights or when you just have the entire cabin to yourself!
Service on Singapore Airlines First Class to Brunei
As I decided to settle into my original seat, the crew including the head purser Tony, introduced them selves in turn and offered me welcome drinks and hot towels as well as the special festive first class menu!
I decided just to have some fresh orange juice for the welcome drink.
The menu is linked below.
This was still an early morning flight. So breakfast was the focus for this flight.
Now since I had an egg based breakfast at the Private room, I fancied something different. The Singapore Roti Prata as a main cought my eye, it came with a spicy fish curry! Whenever I’ve ever had Roti of any sort, its always been accompanied with some form of meat, so I was rather intrigued by the fish!
The breakfast service started after some Dom Perignon with a fruit plate.
This was followed by the bircher muesli, some pastries and more coffee.
Eventually the roti was served and it just filled up the whole cabin with the most incredible smell. Something that would immediately make you hungry, even if you weren’t! All the crew were talking about it being such a good choice!
And man, it tasted every bit as fantastic as it smelt. However, as the description stated, it was hot! So much so I had to order more pastries after to calm my tongue!
I had another coffee after I finished and the crew were all eagerly awaiting any further orders for anything but I was simply just satisfied to just sit back and take in the rest of the flight.
About 30 minutes after I finished eating we began our descent and had some amazing view of Brunei beneath us..
The flight touched down 10 minutes ahead of schedule and again, I was the only passenger exiting via door 1.
I cleared immigration fairly quickly and my bag was the 2nd one off in the belt.
Overall thoughts
For a 2 hour flight this was simply a delight and not nearly enough time to fully even enjoy the hard product to what it was no doubt designed for, long flights in comfort!
I’m impressed with the length Singapore goes to to keep their First Class service as consistent as possible, that even for a short flight, you can enjoy and truly First Class meal and service. The roti was my far my favourite airline meal on 2019, by a long shot!
I’m not sure if I would change anything about this flight what so ever. While Spontaneous Escapes, does not usually include First Class redemption discounts, this was already such a amazing deal as it is, I would book it again on a heartbeat!