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Singapore Airlines has confirmed that the second destination it will serve with its new 787-10 Dreamliner will be Perth in Western Australia.
The airline will be the first in the world to offer the stretch-Dreamliner when it add it to the Singapore – Osaka route from 3 May 2018 and Perth won’t be far behind as Singapore Airlines sends its new aircraft to Western Australia from 7 May 2018.
As things stand the Singapore Airlines 787-10 is scheduled to fly one of the 4 daily flights to/from Perth but the flight numbers change shortly after service begins.
Image – Singapore Airlines
Per ExpertFlyer – On Monday 7 May 2018 the 787-10 Dreamliner will operate as SQ223 and SQ214 on the following schedule:
SQ223 SIN 09:30 – 14:40 PER
SQ214 PER 17:10 – 22:35 SIN
From 8 May 2018 the new Dreamliner moves to flights SQ215 and then operates as both SQ215 and SQ216 from 9 May 2018:
SQ215 SIN 18:45 – 23:55 PER (Daily)
SQ216 PER 01:10 – 06:35 SIN (Daily)
These flights are subject to change but, at the time of writing, the 787-10 is loaded into the Singapore Airlines reservations system and showing as flying the schedule above.
Why Is This Important?
It may seem slightly odd that a blog which focuses primarily on the US and European routes is taking an interest in what is, for Singapore Airlines, a regional route, but there’s a very good reason for this.
The Singapore Airlines 787-10 aircraft will feature the airline’s new regional Business Class cabin and, as of yet, Singapore Airline hasn’t released any information letting us know what we can expect.
Considering how many TFM readers (from the US and Europe) fly long-haul into Asia before switching to more regional routes to get to their destinations this is an important cabin to cover.
This is what we know so far:
- The Singapore Airlines 787-10 will offer a 2-cabin layout with 337 seats in total – 36 Business Class seats and 301 Economy Class seats.
- There are no Premium Economy or First Class cabins on the aircraft.
- The Business Class cabin will offer all-aisle-access seating in a 1-2-1 layout
- The Economy Class cabin will offer 9-across seating – I suspect (but can’t be sure) that this means the seat width will be a restrictive 17″.
While that’s all we can say for sure, there is also a very strong rumor (that’s most likely to be true) that’s well worth reporting.
AUBT has reported that the mysterious new regional Business Class product will be the Stelia Aerospace Opal seat….which looks like this (absent of any Singapore Airlines color changes):
Image courtesy of Stelia Aerospace
Image courtesy of Stelia Aerospace
There may be a few customisable options that Singapore Airlines has tweaked but, essentially, this is what we expect the new seats to look like.
From the images above it would appear that, as in a lot of modern Business Class cabins, some seats will be more private than others – the first image above illustrates this best with the forward-most seat being considerably more protected from the aisle than the seat immediately behind it.
According to the Stelia Aerospace website these seats offer a true lie-flat bed which extends to 77″ in length (6ft 5″) which should be enough for most passengers.
Bottom Line
There are positives and negatives here.
The A330-300 the new Dreamliner is replacing on the Singapore – Perth route doesn’t offer an all-aisle-access Business Class cabin and only has angle-flat seating so the Dreamliner’s forward-most cabin should be a nice step up. The Dreamliner also offers 6 more Business Class seats than the A330 so that should help with award availability.
The biggest negative comes in the Economy Class cabin. Where the current A330 offers a truly fantastic 19″ of seat width in Economy Class the 9-across seating the Dreamliner will come with won’t offer anything close to that.
In addition the Airbus offers 32″ of seat pitch but Singapore Airlines is yet to confirm if this will be maintained in the Dreamliner.
If any Aussies are reading this post (especially any used to flying this route) what do you guys think of the new service?
Yep booked the new 787-10 all the way to BKK. easy reward availability and 65,000 points for 4 segments on the new plane!. only down fall is the 0110 departure from Perth but well worth to try this new product
That sounds like a great points redemption – would you come back and let us know what you thought of the new product?