SEA 2014: Singapore Suites Class NRT to LAX A380 First Class Review

I wasn’t super impressed after the first leg of my Singapore Suites journey, but I could immediately tell after boarding that this flight was going to be a lot better. Just from the warmth of the greeting, I knew that I was in for a treat.

While the load from SIN to NRT was 10/12, there were only two of us continuing on to LAX. But even though the load was only 2/12, I still had 4 different people chat with me or give me something prior to departure. I didn’t get a new amenity kit on this segment since I was a through passenger, but I did get new pajamas and slippers (which were unwrapped at my seat in front of me).

For this flight, I had pre-ordered a VGML or strict vegetarian meal. After disappointing VGMLs on Lufthansa First Class and Thai First Class, I was interested to see what Singapore would do.

The rice croquette was tasty, but I just cannot with the vegetable skewers. Whyyy do airlines think that all vegetarians want to eat poorly cooked red peppers and zucchini?

As a terrible vegan, I had to get some caviar. No caviar spoon, but a healthy serving of caviar, and I’m sure that I could have gotten more if I had asked.

Next up was more bell peppers and some mushrooms. Not great, and it was served pretty cold. That being said, I actively dislike most mushrooms, so other people might like this more than I did.

They couldn’t serve soup at the time because of turbulence, so they skipped to the salad course. Except the salad was served partially frozen. If you look closely enough, you might be able to notice ice crystals on some of the radishes and frisee. I don’t particularly like eating icy salads, so I sent this course back. They apologized profusely, and ended up serving me the skipped soup course since my entree wasn’t ready.

The soup was actually quite good. I don’t think I’ve ever had a soy bean milk soup, and I generally am not the biggest fan of soup courses, but I liked this a lot. It was just a very large portion, so I didn’t finish it.

For the entree, it was a vegan lasagna, that was quite convincingly not vegan given the creaminess and cheese-like texture inside. I found this entree to be pretty successful as far as VGMLs go.

Finally, I got some tiramisu for dessert. This wasn’t on the VGML menu, but I’m a fat kid who likes cake. And this cake was reasonably tasty.

After dinner, the flight attendant set up two of the center seats to make the famed double bed for me. It helps that there were only two of us in the entire cabin, but as far as I could tell, the other passenger just stayed in his suite and didn’t ask for two beds to himself. Honestly, if you’re traveling by yourself, the double bed thing is kinda silly given that there’s still a divider between the seats, so you can’t comfortably straddle the two beds.

Besides the separate seat and bed combo on the Lufthansa 747, this is probably the most comfortable bed in the sky I’ve slept in. The bed is actually a little on the narrow side, but it’s quite comfortable given that it’s not just a converted seat. I also appreciated that the cabin was kept quite cold, so I didn’t wake up sweating. The Givenchy pajamas that Singapore gives out are pretty thick, so it’s easy to overheat.

After sleeping for a couple of hours, I woke up and one of the flight attendants gave me a tour of the plane. Even though the load in first class was pretty light, business class and economy class were almost completely full.

For my pre-arrival meal, I first chose the kaiseki breakfast. I generally like to choose Japanese meals catered out of Japan, but I felt that this meal was just okay. Nothing was specifically good or bad.

Since I was a little unsatisfied after the Japanese breakfast, I got the pancakes afterward, which were pretty good. The fruit plate was also good with all of the fruit being ripe and sweet.

Pretty soon, we arrived at LAX. LAX is one of my favorite US airports for plane watching as there are so many different carriers and A380s operating there. On this occasion, we were parked next to one of the Lufthansa planes painted specifically for the World Cup.

Overall, this flight made me understand why people rave about Singapore Airlines. The service was proactive, warm, and friendly. I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time chatting with some of the flight attendants, and they were all awesome. The food on Singapore is good–not Michelin-star quality by any means, but solid–and the hard product on the A380 is great. The bed is super comfortable, and the suite is nice and private. I’d love to fly Singapore Suites again, although it’s quite expensive to do so given that you have to pay fuel surcharges as well as a sizable number of points.