This time it’s personal

The outcome of four years of design work and many hours of passenger feedback was highlighted by an enlarged first class Suite and a ground-up design new business class seat that does away with the flip-over bed, alongside improvements to the passenger experience in both premium economy and economy.

Beyond the headlines about leather seats that swivel up to 270 degrees in Suites, double beds in business class and a more personalised inflight entertainment system, the revamped A380 is also another example of SIA’s willingness to think differently and embrace new ideas under chief executive Goh Choon Phong.

First, let’s look at the details of what will be flying on the Singapore-Sydney route from the second half of December.

NEW CONCEPT FOR SUITES AND BUSINESS CLASS

The new fully-enclosed A380 Suites feature a separate fully flat bed, a leather seat that swivels up to 270 degrees, as well as adjustable mood lighting, a credenza featuring plenty of storage spaces, as well as a 32in HD monitor and companion tablet.

The number of suites, which were designed by Pierrejean Design Studio and manufactured by Zodiac Seats UK, has been halved from 12 to six and the cabin moved to the upper deck of the A380.

Goh said the thinking behind the reduction in number of suites was a combination of wanting to give more space to customers – each individual suite has increased from about 30sq ft to about 50sq ft – and based on “what we see as the demand pattern for A380 suites”.

Just behind suites on the upper deck is business class, where SIA has maintained its forward-facing 1-2-1 configuration for the 78-seat cabin which offers every passenger unobstructed access to the aisle.

However, there have been some new elements introduced in what is a seat designed by JPA Design of the UK and manufactured by Japanese firm JAMCO Corporation, whose relationship with SIA stretches back close to four decades beginning with the supply of galleys and expanding into seats (including SIA’s current Airbus A350-900 business class seat) about 10 years ago.

The biggest change is instead of passengers flipping over the seat to sleep – as is now the case – it reclines from an upright position to form the bed. A mattress topper is supplied, as well as a duvet. This design will offer passengers more reclining options when the seat is in upright mode. There is also a small fold-down arm rest on the inside of the seat.

Further, the use of carbon composite materials has enabled the seat structure to be thinner, which has created enough space to store a roller bag in the seat area rather than in an overhead locker.

Carbon composite materials has enabled the seat structure to be thinner.

And couples traveling together in business class will be able to book a pair of middle seats that convert to a double bed. For solo travellers seated side-by-side in the middle seats, SIA has designed a new privacy screen that is certified to be fully deployed, at halfway, or completely retracted during all phases of flight including taxi, takeoff and landing.

“Many of our customers are telling us that when they travel, especially on business class, they would rather not have to lift the bag up and put it on top. They would rather have it close by,” Goh explained.

Jamco Corporation chief technology officer Toshihisa Kasuya said finding a way to give passengers more space despite having to fit more seats in the available space was one of the challenges of the project.

“Carbon composite materials has enabled the seat structure to be thinner.”

The new business class bed is one-inch shorter at 78in, from 79in on the current product, and narrower at 25in compared with 28in. The seat pitch – an industry measure from one point on the seat to the same point in front – has also been trimmed slightly to 50in, from 51in.

“The seat pitch has been reduced but the space has been provided. That was a challenge,” Kasuya said at the official launch event.

Kasuya said there was also a lot of testing to ensure the padding of the seat was comfortable for both sleeping and sitting.

“We have to design to fit both, comfortable for the seat and comfortable for the bed. We tried several different types of cushions and combinations of cushions.”

Some have quibbled at the lack of on-board amenities that feature on the A380s on other airlines such as bars, showers or even a duty free gallery.

In response, SIA senior vice president for products and services Marvin Tan said this latest iteration of SIA’s A380 cabin was the result of its customer research, where passengers rated factors such as the quality of the cabin crew ahead of these other features.

“It’s a bit of a tradeoff because on the one hand you have customers who say this is what they like but on the other hand you have customers say your crew give fantastic service and I don’t need that,” Tan explained when asked about the lack of a bar for passengers in business and Suites.

“It takes up space. I’d rather have a space to store my laptop, my iPad, my tablets etc.”

“We feel that because we are very confident about our cabin crew service in terms of anything that is food and beverage related we should let our crew do the hard work for our premium passengers.”

While Suites and business class are on the upper deck, the lower deck will feature premium economy between Doors 1 and 2, with economy stretching from Door 2 through to the tail.

SIA will offer passengers in these two cabins, as well as those in business and Suites, an enhanced inflight entertainment system “mykrisworld”, where members of the airline’s frequent flyer program Krisflyer will be able to “bookmark” where they finished watching one movie at the end of a flight in order to pick up from where they left off on their next flight.

Further, economy class passengers will have a touchscreen IFE monitor that eliminated the need for a separate handset. The monitor is also larger than what is flying on SIA’s A380s currently at 11.1in, compared with 10.6in. The seats, designed and built by Recaro, also have a six-way headrest that offers more neck support.

“Of course, we recognise to be competitive in the market there are certain space limitations that we have to work with to enable seat density but there are a lot of other areas of the product you can invest,” Tan said.

Premium economy is the only seat that will be the same on both the new and old A380 layout. It was manufactured by ZIM Flugsitz GmbH and customised by JPA Design.

FUTURE PROOFING AT PLAY WITH NFC READER

SIA has also installed a near-field communicator (NFC) reader at all seats.

The technology will not be utilised when flights commence on December 18 between Sydney and Singapore. Instead, the airline is still mulling what is the best use for what is becoming an increasingly common form of contactless communication.

“We really don’t have a very concrete plan yet on what we want to use it for,” Tan said.

“Syncing, date transfer, things like that can be part of the functionality. But again, in those areas, it’s all just concepts, ideas, plans at this point in time.

“It takes a lot of time and it can be quite costly to do work on the plane. Once it starts flying, that’s it, you lose the opportunity unless you want to ground the plane which is not the best thing to do so some of these decisions we have to make slightly ahead of the curve in a way.”

CHANGES MEAN CONSISTENT A380 CONFIGURATION

This new A380 configuration of 471 seats comprising six in suites, 78 in business, 44 in premium economy and 343 in economy will appear on five new aircraft that were due to be delivered between November and the end of 2018. These five aircraft are replacing five A380s being returned to lessors.

And the 471-seat configuration will also be retrofitted to 14 A380s, with the program starting in late 2018 and due to be completed in 2020.

This represents a capacity increase of between seven per cent and 24 per cent from SIA’s two A380 configurations currently flying.
SIA plans to maintain its fleet of A380s at 19 aircraft.

However, it will operate with a reduced A380 fleet until 2020 as older aircraft are returned to lessors, new aircraft arrive and others head to the workshop for reconfiguration into the new layout.

At press time, the Star Alliance member had eight A380s with 379 seats (12 suites, 86 business, 36 premium economy and 245 economy) and nine with 441 seats (12 suites, 60 business, 36 premium economy and 333 economy).

The airline expects to have two A380s in the new 471-seat layout by the end of calendar 2017, while three of the five aircraft earmarked for withdrawal will have gone.

Chief analyst at aviation thinktank CAPA – Centre for Aviation Brendan Sobie said the move to add more seats should enable SIA to grow capacity, or available seat kilometres (ASK), and help improve the profitability of its A380 operations.

“SIA is obviously hoping the higher revenues generated by the A380 fleet offset the A380’s relatively high operating costs and the investments in the new products,” Sobie said in a research note dated November 6.

“SIA’s A380 operation should generate 14 per cent more available seat kilometres (ASK) once the retrofits are completed, driving a two per cent to three per cent increase in total ASKs for SIA.

“While this may not seem significant it will enable SIA to resume capacity growth after a period of capacity reductions.“

SIA’s A380s operate on 12 routes. While most are year-round, some destinations such as Melbourne, Osaka Kansai and Auckland are seasonal.

Further, there are a number of routes – Sydney and London Heathrow are two examples – that feature both the 379-seat and 441-seat variants.

Sobie said having one 471-seat layout across the entire fleet of A380s made sense given a fleet of just 19 aircraft.

Further, the new A380 layout was “much more efficient” that what is on board currently.

“Splitting the A380 fleet into two configurations has created challenges for SIA, particularly during periods of heavy maintenance and unexpected service disruptions,” Sobie said.

“The new cabin products on the A380 fleet reinforce SIA’s premium position and enable the airline to continue offering among the best premium products in the industry despite intensifying competition.

“However, the products are also practical and efficient, enabling SIA to make better use of space at a time profits are increasingly coming under pressure.”

Sensible though it may be, routes such as Singapore-Zurich and Singapore-Frankfurt-New York JFK will experience an increase in economy seats of about 40 per cent as they transition from 379-seat A380s to the new configuration.

Goh said the 379-seat layout was the result of “incremental changes in the cabin” such as the addition of premium economy and described the configuration as “not quite ideal”.

“It wasn’t optimised across the fleet so if you ask me, that was actually undersized,” Goh said.

SIA MAKES PROGRESS ON TRANSFORMATION

The A380 cabin upgrades come at a time where SIA, and others, continue to battle the rapid international expansion of Chinese airlines and the ongoing threat from Middle East carriers offering long-haul to long-haul connections through their hubs which have bitten into previously lucrative markets. And in Asia, low-cost carriers (LCC) have won passengers happy to pay lower fares for a no-frills product on short- and medium-haul routes.

As part of efforts to adapt to this new environment, SIA established Scoot to capture a slice of the growing low-cost long-haul market.

Scoot recently merged with short-haul LCC Tigerair Singapore and the combined entity now operates under the Scoot brand.

And earlier in 2017, SIA said it had established a transformation office to conduct a wide-ranging review of the airline group’s network, fleet, product and service, as well as organisational structure and processes.

While it is still early days, there are signs the Star Alliance member may be weathering the storm, with net profit for the six months to September 30 2017 up 32 per cent at S$425 million (A$407 million), compared with S$321.5 million in the prior corresponding period.

The result was boosted by an improvement in operating profit from the Singapore Airlines operation, as well as from SIA’s cargo and engineering units.

Singapore Airlines’ revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) rose 3.4 per cent in the half, while capacity measured by available seat kilometres (ASK) eased 0.1 per cent. As a result, load factors improved 2.8 percentage points to 80.9 per cent. Yields, a measure of average airfares per passenger, fell 1.9 per cent.

“Unfortunately, yields continue to decline,” SIA senior vice president for finance Stephen Barnes said during the company’s November 8 results briefing, according to a transcript of the presentation released to the Singapore stock exchange.

“To the extent that if there is any silver lining in that, the decline is at a slower pace than we’ve become accustomed to seeing.”
However, operating profit declined at regional wing SilkAir and low-cost-carrier Scoot.

Goh said the airline’s transformation program, which involve more than 60 projects, had already achieved some early goals, including the move to new revenue management (RM) system that has allowed the airline to be “more nimble” in its pricing.

“Some of the results are coming through, not in full yet, but some results are coming through,” Goh said.

“First time in, since 2013, we are actually seeing growth in terms of flown revenue for first half, not total revenue, but flown revenue, which is important because this is really the revenue you get from selling tickets to our customers.”

In terms of making the organisation more efficient in its day-to-day operations, Goh said the company on November 1 implemented an approvals process that required no more than three levels of review to get the final go-ahead.

“That would definitely cut down a lot of decision-making, bureaucratic processes and ensure that we are a lot more effective and prompt,” Goh said.

“This is really just the beginning.

This is really just the beginning. Goh Choon Phong

“It’s only about since May that we formally launched it. There is a lot more that we are doing.”

In terms of the outlook, SIA said in its results presentation there were still “headwinds” in the market as competitors mounted significant capacity in key markets, with yields continuing to be under pressure, despite some stabilisation in recent months.

“It’s fair to say that going forward, we are still seeing the demand, but we are also seeing more capacity being added,” Goh said at the results briefing.

“How that is going to balance out is something that we have to watch very closely, but we do now have a better tool in the form of the RM system. Plus also a more nimble organisation in response to pricing in the market.”