Singapore Airlines Business Class Seat Guide

Spend your miles on the right cabin products by knowing the five different types of SQ Business Class seats.

So you’ve finally accumulated the miles needed for your first-ever Business Class redemption on Singapore Airlines. Congratulations! Now there’s just the small matter of making sure you get the best possible experience, and that all starts with picking the right seat.

This guide will orientate you to the different types of Business Class seats available on Singapore Airlines, and how to identify which one you have.

How many different Business Class seats are out there?

Singapore Airlines currently uses five different types of Business 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 seat name refers to the year the product was introduced. If you’d like more details on each individual seat, have a read of The Milelion’s Seat and Fleet Guide.

Here’s my general preference of seats, from most favored to least favored:

  1. 2017 Business Class (excellent privacy, recline to flat and spanking new)
  2. 2013 Business Class (excellent privacy and comfort, but requires you to flip the seat to convert to bed)
  3. 2018 Regional Business Class (brand new product that with good privacy and comfort, higher density and somewhat narrow)
  4. 2006 Business Class (full flat and very wide, but ageing badly with low-res screen)
  5. 2009 Regional Business Class (angled flat, no guaranteed aisle access, little privacy)

Look at your aircraft type

The simplest way of telling what Business 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.

However, there are two types of aircraft where it’s slightly less clear- the A380-800, which has a mixture of the 2006 and 2017 Business Class seats, and the A350-900, which is predominantly fitted with the 2013 Business Class seat but has a handful of regionally-configured airframes with the 2018 Regional Business Class seat.

If you’re flying the A380-800…

Go and look at the seatmap for your aircraft, which you can check out under the Manage Booking page or during the booking process, before you make payment.

If your seatmap looks like the one on the left in green (with the double bed symbol in 11 D/F), you have the 2017 Business Class seat. If your seatmap looks like either one on the right in red, you have the 2006 Business Class seat.

As of February 2019, the 2017 Business Class 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

If you’re flying the A350-900…

If your seatmap looks like the one on the left in green, you have the 2018 Regional Business Class on Singapore Airline’s new regional configured A350. If your seatmap looks like either one on the right in red, you have the 2013 Business Class seat on either the long haul or ultra long haul configured A350.

The 777-200 confusion

Although checking the aircraft type is generally sufficient to help you deduce which seat you have, be careful when you see “Boeing 777-200”. That’s because SQ operates two different types of aircraft: The Boeing 777-200 and Boeing 777-200ER. Both are, very unhelpfully, labelled as “Boeing 777-200”.

SIN-IST on SQ392 is operated by a B777-200ER, but the SQ website unhelpfully just lists “B777-200”

In these cases, you’re going to want to view the seatmap to be sure.

A 2-2-2 configuration confirms you have the B777-200 aircraft with the 2009 Regional Business Class seat. A 1-2-1 configuration confirms you have the B777-200ER aircraft with the 2006 Business Class seat.

Conclusion

A given route can be operated by a mixture of aircraft, and different aircraft may mean different seats! Assuming all departure times are equally acceptable to you, be sure you pick the aircraft that gives you the best possible seat.

Protip: You’d want to pick SQ806 in this case for the newest Business Class seat

If you found this guide useful, be sure to check out the guide for First Class and Suites seats.

Aaron Wong
Aaron Wong
Aaron founded The Milelion to help people travel better for less and impress chiobu. He was 50% successful.

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Neil

The seat map I see on their website appears different to the screenshots for the A380-800. Any other ideas on how I can check whether I have the 2006 or the 2017 business class model? I am flying SQ from SIN to FRA.

alian

One has to flip to go to the aisle on 2006J ? Think you have a typo in your first table Aaron

sammy

nice reference! I will spent my Air China miles on Business class and save the SQ miles for the first and suite.

Michael

Great overview and happy to see those A333 and 772’s retire soon as per some of your earlier posts.
I’m on the 2017 version Business Class to Sydney next week.
Managed to get 11D which apparently has the bigger foot bench.
And Suites on the way back!
(Albeit the 2007 version, almost impossible to redeem upgrades on the 2017 version on that route.)

Michael

Thanks!!! It’s my 2nd time and will let you know how it was.
I flew 11A last time on the new A380 and quite liked it but now I traded the window seat for the apparently slightly bigger seat on 11D.
Smart choice or not?

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