More Sydney and London flights for the first Singapore Airlines refitted A380s

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.

These flights are tentatively scheduled to operate with the new seats from 1st September 2019, but the exact dates are likely to be different based on the timing for each refitted aircraft coming back into service.

With the existing A380 Version 3 flights still planned to continue on the same schedule as today, an additional three refitted aircraft would be required to operate these extra flights on a daily basis.

That means it’s likely that some of the new products may be flying only on specific days of the week initially, as three aircraft aren’t likely to emerge from the hangar on the same day.

Provisional schedule

Sydney

From 1st September 2019 (provisional)

Note: These flights are in addition to the current Sydney flights operating with the new A380 cabin products (SQ221/SQ232).

London Heathrow

From 1st September 2019 to 26th October 2019 (provisional)

* Next day

From 27th October 2019 (provisional)

Note: A380 LHR-SIN flight switches to SQ319 from this date. Thanks to reader Eddy for spotting it.

* Next day

Note: These flights are in addition to the current London flights operating with the new A380 cabin products (SQ317/SQ322).

More details

Like last year when we revealed that Zurich and Shanghai would be the fourth and fifth destinations for the new A380s, the seat map still reflects the current configuration on all these flights through to the end of the live flight schedule.

This will only be updated when Singapore Airlines officially announces the plans with exact start dates, which tends to occur just one or two months beforehand so they can be certain about the timescale. In that case we’re likely to still be waiting a while before knowing the exact dates for these refitted planes to start flying those services.

One thing we also know is that Singapore Airlines has been capping the available First Class / Suites seat inventory for the above flights to a maximum of six from the above dates, and on flights with one passenger booked it’s five, with two passengers booked it’s four etc…

In fact they started doing this for the London flights (SQ308/321) in November last year, and for the Sydney flights (SQ231/222) a couple of weeks ago. This supports the plan for these flights to switch to the new configurations from around September 2019.

We’ve updated our 2017 Suites and Business Tracker page with the latest details, you’ll find the full schedule for the new A380 cabin products there and it’s regularly updated to help you choose the right flight on the right route next time you travel.

Our reviews

If you haven’t read them before, be sure to check out our comprehensive reviews of the latest Singapore Airlines Suites and 2017 Business Class product.

Award flights

There is some Suites saver availability on these flights, especially on the Sydney route. Remember redemption rates are going up tonight. It will set you back 5,000 more miles each way for a Suites saver to or from Sydney and 10,000 more to or from London from midnight onwards, so now could be a very good time to get some plans locked in.

Summary

A couple of new destinations would have been nice for these new products, but this strategy to double down on London and Sydney isn’t actually a bad idea for Singapore Airlines.

It allows them to showcase the latest cabin products with twice as many connection options on the ‘kangaroo route’ all the way from London to Australia and vice-versa, where it faces strong competition from the Middle East carriers.

You can already fly the Qatar Qsuite or Etihad’s First Apartments all the way in both directions on the ‘kangaroo route’, for example.

There are only a few hours left to lock in your KrisFlyer redemptions at current rates, as the devaluation kicks in at midnight tonight.

While we can’t guarantee at this stage that the flights above will feature the new A380 products from a specific date, or on every day of the week at first, a booking from September onwards (you can currently book through to 13th January 2020) will give you a very high chance of it.

Saver awards to London already seem to be mostly waitlisted, but there are immediately confirmable options to and from Sydney.

If you’re redeeming this afternoon and this evening for the pre-devaluation rates – good luck! Let us know in the comments section if you were successful.

(Cover Photo: MainlyMiles)