Suite new A380, but is it the business?

The suites will move upstairs, creating a single-aisle front cabin and displacing business class seats backwards in the upper deck. Premium economy will take over the space where first class currently sits at the front of the main deck, with economy remaining at the rear of the main deck. Notably, all A380s will be outfitted in the same layout rather than some having economy in the rear portion of the upper deck.

Singapore Airlines’ suites are a new take on the single-aisle upstairs A380 product, which was first introduced by Etihad as its Apartment product. There are fewer than Etihad’s nine seats, and no Residence taking up one of the spaces and a “forehead” lavatory. There aren’t showers either, with those forehead zones turned into a pair of large loos with powder room Seating.

Inside the suite, a fold-up bed sits along one wall, with a large inflight entertainment monitor that swings along the aisle wall of the suite. The seating is comprised of a single swivelling chair on the window side of the suite opposite the bed, with a table folding out from an angled console between the chair and the aisle. Beneath the windows sits a set of consoles and storage, and there’s an option to combine two suites into one larger double bed.

The swivel thing has been tried before, most recently by American Airlines on its Boeing 777-300ER first class product. It hasn’t been universally successful, with the benefits of the swivel outweighed by the compromises around knee space in desk mode and the fiddliness of the mechanism. With manufacturer Zodiac Seats UK – a company that has not recently covered itself in glory on timely delivery of quality products to customer specification and user delight – producing the suites, this will be something to watch.

There’s a lot of space in the suite, but is it ideally used? There’s no sofa hiding underneath the bed, so it’s unclear what passengers are expected to use all the space for, other than sitting and looking at it. The table, too, sits between the swivel chair and the door, so passengers will be expected to face away from the windows towards the aisle while dining. The positioning of the seats and the lack of any other seating also means that passengers travelling in pairs are unable to dine together.

Given the amount of space in the suite with the bed folded up would allow a flight attendant to walk around to serve food at a window position – perhaps with a pop-up screen to allow movie fans to watch something while eating – this seems like a missed trick, as does the relative narrowness of the bed, which is a common complaint in both the Etihad and first-generation Suites product.

In business, there are new forward-facing fully flat beds from Japanese seatmaker Jamco, which also produced the current Boeing 777 product for the airline, after the current A380 seats manufactured by disgraced seatmaker Koito, which falsified safety testing, were understandably discontinued. The big news is that the three pairs of bulkhead business class seats will convert into a double bed, although a chunky divider from waist level down will discourage hanky-panky. The seats seem a little small, though, and retain SQ’s signature angled sleeping function that isn’t universally loved. Apart from an updated design language (likely to match the imminent regional business class refresh) there’s little innovation here.

Premium economy will be the same seat as on existing aircraft, while economy will see new seats in the usual 3-4-3 layout rather than the 3-5-3 configuration Airbus has been pushing.

All in all, many (including your columnist) are wondering where the old SQ magic has gone. Instead of gazing in wonder at the new Singapore Airlines product, all eyes are turned to the unveiling of Emirates’ new first class suites as this issue of Australian Aviation goes to press.