It’s true to say the ‘hype’ has somewhat died down regarding Singapore Airlines’ latest Suites and Business Class cabin products on its newest Airbus A380 aircraft. All five of the latest (and in all likelihood final) batch of SIA A380s to be delivered are now in service flying daily flights between Singapore and Sydney, London, Hong Kong, Zurich and Shanghai.
What happens next though, while perhaps lower on the media radar, is no less important for frequent Singapore Airlines flyers. The older 14 A380s in the fleet will be progressively refitted with these new seat products with the work originally due to start in late 2018 and running through the end of 2020.
Take the refit schedule with a pinch of salt of course – Singapore Airlines isn’t the only airline that tends to be overly optimistic with these plans. The 777-300ER refit for example took over 2 years longer to complete than first announced, finally finishing up at the very end of last year.
There are also some well-documented design issues with the new Suites cabin in particular, and we understand some improvements will be incorporated to the refitted aircraft to address these. That has probably already pushed back the refit program slightly.
Flights for the refits
Information sighted by MainlyMiles shows that the next two flights to switch to the A380 Version 3 with the latest seat products will be Sydney (SQ231/SQ222, daily) and London Heathrow (SQ308/SQ321, daily), once the refitted aircraft begin to emerge from the hangar in the third quarter of this year.