Wings Review: Singapore economy excels

Attending the Global Speakers Summit in Bali sounds like the trip of a lifetime, and it is. But it’s also the investment of a lifetime. The event last week attracted 300 professional speakers from around the world, including a 15-strong delegation from South Africa.

Costs of flights and accommodation are not for the faint-carded. As a result, it was fascinating to see the permutations it took to get them all there and back, ranging from Qatar via Doha (my flight there) to Emirates via Dubai (half of our crew), to Singapore Airlines via, well, Singapore. 

That’s the route I chose to return, as Qatar required a layover of several centuries, or 18 hours, which feels the same in an airport. 

Full disclosure: a miracle occurred on the first leg, from Bali to Singapore, and the middle seat next to my aisle seat was unoccupied. That’s the budget traveller’s equivalent of getting a business class upgrade. So to start, there was room to spread out.

That also meant room to explore and discover the oft-hidden secrets of the seat. And there, lurking low down behind the seats in the next row ahead, was a full multi-port plug point that could accommodate my high-capacity Anker charger. My phone had dipped below 40% battery capacity when I boarded, and was fully charged halfway through the flight, after which my laptop also enjoyed some TLC (tender loving charge).

An additional USB port is positioned just below the infotainment screen, brightly lit up in green. However, it us only USB-A, so be sure to bring old-fashioned USB adapters along for the Type-C cables that have come with smartphones for some years now. It is a minor inconvenience, but a surprising lapse.

The Boeing B787-10 seat 3-3-3 configuration on Singapore Airlines provides more legroom than I have found on many an economy cabin. But that’s not what makes the cabin special.

The infotainment screen is also one of the widest I’ve seen in economy. 

And then the content! The selection spans movies, TV, live TV, shopping, music, and more important, the range under each category is vast. Even on the short-haul leg, the choice was outrageously large. Other airlines should require their execs to fly Singapore to understand what it means to serve customers’ needs.

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on social media on @art2gee.