After much speculation, we finally have a date: As per AusBT, SQ will unveil its new Suites, business class and economy class seats for its new A380s on 2 November. The media event will be held in Singapore (and The Milelion was not invited, but good thing he is mature and completely not petty).
What’s interesting about the choice of date is that it looks to get the jump on Emirates’ new first class launch at the Dubai Airshow that runs from 12-16 November.
Based on what we’ve seen in the past, the gap between product announcement and product launch has been anything between 60-80 days
- 2006 Business/First Class: Announced 17 Oct, Launched 6 Dec (59 days)
- 2013 Business/First Class: Announced 9 July, Launched 27 Sept (80 days)
- 2015 Premium Economy: Announced 21 May, Launched 9 Aug (80 days)
So I think it’s safe to say we won’t see these new products until start of Jan at the earliest.
What do we know about the new products?
Say what you will about SQ, but they’ve been playing their cards very close to the chest on this one. Here’s a collection of what we know and don’t know about the new A380 cabin products
- Suites will be moved to the upper deck and cut from 12 to 6 in a single aisle formation
- Suites will not feature a shower
- Sydney will almost certainly be the launch destination for the new A380 products, with SQ221 and 232 likely to be the inaugural flights (neither is selling more than 6 Suites seats from January)
- Some rejected designs for SQ’s new cabin products can be found here
- The business class seat introduced on 2 November will be the same as that which appears on the ULR A350s that will restart non stop service to the LAX, New York and a third unnamed destination (Boston? Seattle? Chicago?)
Suites saver award availability on 221 is near impossible to find, but I managed to secure a date in late March. For those of you who are thinking of making a speculative booking, my advice is that you don’t bother messing around with the website checking date by date- just call up KF membership services, tell them you want to fly 221 in suites saver and don’t care what date. They’ll look through the months and feed you possible dates. That’s what I did.
This is all very exciting. Let’s see what SQ has up its sleeve.
FYI, if you search the furthest date available for booking (currently it’s 23 Aug 2018), there are saver suites available for SQ221. I’m gunning for Aug 30th.. keeping my fingers crossed when they open up next week.
I just tried calling up KF as well but was informed that they have to look through each date 1 by 1 too as they don’t have any monthly overview. I guess you and your CSR were both really patient?
Csr put me on hold and I guess she went date by date. But I imagine their system is a bit faster than the one we have on the website that requires a reload every time you change the date
i am currently booked on SQ231. waitlisted on 221.
Will I stand a chance? 🙁
232 from Sydney in Aug 2018 is still showing a 12 suites configuration.
On the seatmap yes. But they don’t sell more than 6 seats. Besides I don’t expect it to be updated until after the launch is announced
SQ221 to Sydney in Mar 2018 is also showing a 12 suites configuration.
Been playing around with ITA and seems like they’re still selling > 6 seats on 15 Dec, but not more than 6 seats from 16 Dec onwards. Perhaps they are still gunning for a 2017 inaugural flight after all… haha.
Every SQ221 flight from 16 Dec onwards also shows “A few seats left” even though the seat map is entirely open, whereas SQ232 generally does not show the same message. Fingers crossed for an early launch!
Called it! 🙂
https://www.ausbt.com.au/singapore-airlines-flies-new-airbus-a380-to-sydney-from-december