Flying First Class for the first time is an unforgettable experience, and the pinnacle of any travel hacker’s journey. It’s also likely to blow a big hole in your miles balance, so you want to make sure you get the best possible experience .That all starts with picking the right seat.
How many different First & Suites Class seats are out there?
Singapore Airlines currently uses fourย different types of First & Suites Class seats across their fleet. Here’s a brief summary of their key traits, and which aircraft you’ll find them on.
The year in front of the name refers to the year the product was introduced. If you’d like to read up more details on each individual seat, have a read of The Milelion’s Seat and Fleet Guide.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a “bad” First Class seat, but here’s my order of preference
- 2017 Suites (hands down the most surreal experience you can have in an airplane, some flaws notwithstanding)
- 2007 Suites (old, but one of the best sleeping experiences in the sky)
- 2013 First Class (no big wow factor like the Suites, but still very luxurious and private)
- 2006 First Class (ageing, but good enough for the short hops to MNL/CGK where they’re currently deployed)
Look at your aircraft type
The simplest way of telling what First or Suites Class seats you can expect on your flight is to look at the aircraft type. You’ll be able to find this in your booking confirmation, or during the booking process.
Once you know the aircraft type, you can refer to the chart below:
As you can see, in most cases simply knowing the aircraft type is sufficient to deduce what kind of seat you have. For example, if you’re on the B777-300ER, you’ll have a single row of 1-2-1 configured 2013 First Class seats. If you’re on the B777-300, that’ll be two rows of 1-2-1 configured 2006 First Class seats.
However, there is one type of aircraft where it’s slightly less clear- the A380-800, which has a mixture of the 2007 and 2017 Suites seats.
If you’re flying the A380-800…
Go and look at the seatmap for your aircraft, which you can check out under the Manage My Booking page or during the booking process, before you make payment.
If your seatmap looks like the one on the left in green (with 6 seats in the cabin), you have the 2017 Suites. If your seatmap looks like the one on the right in red (with 12 seats in the cabin), you have the 2007 Suites.
As of February 2019, the 2017 Suites can be found on the following routes and flight numbers. All these flights operate daily:
Hong Kong
- SQ856 SIN-HKG
- SQ861 HKG-SIN
London
- SQ322 SIN-LHR
- SQ317 LHR-SIN
Shanghai
- SQ830 SIN-PVG
- SQ833 PVG-SIN
Sydney
- SQ221 SIN-SYD
- SQ232 SYD-SIN
Zurich
- SQ346 SIN-ZRH
- SQ345 ZRH-SIN
Conclusion
So that’s how you figure out which First Class or Suites seat you can expect!ย If you found this guide useful, be sure to check out the guide for Business Class seats.
When will they update the A380 first class cabin out of JFK ?
Your guess is as good as mine sadly. JFK is particularly hard to do because you’d need to indent more than 1 aircraft to provide daily service, so great is the distance
Would you be able to do a post on first class seats across different airlines???
SQ is great, but there are some really fantastic first class products available on other airlines as well.
Will make for a wonderful reading experience as well.
Hi Aaron, do you know where the rest of the 2007 First Class A380s are currently being deployed to?
any route other than those listed below which is operated by an a380 will have the old products, eg JFK, FRA, AKL