More Singapore Airlines Perth flights get the new Regional Business Class from July

More movements in the Singapore Airlines schedules have been announced this week, with another of the airline’s four daily Perth rotations switching across to the latest Regional Business Class seats from July. This shift will see 75% of SIA services to and from Western Australia served with the latest cabin product, courtesy of one of the carrier’s upcoming A350 deliveries.

The schedule

Currently Perth only sees a single daily flight with the latest Business Class products, SQ215/216, which has been flown using the Boeing 787-10 since May 2018 (with the exception of the first week in April 2019 during the latest Rolls-Royce engine debacle).

You may recall we were talking about changes to the Perth route very recently. That’s because we reported three weeks ago that just a month before this latest change takes effect an A350 Regional is dropped into the Perth schedule from 3rd June, just over two weeks from now.

From that date the route sees two flights per day with the latest Business Class product, a 787-10 and an A350 Regional.

3rd June 2019 to 30th June 2019

All flights operate daily

From 1st July there’s more good news with another factory fresh Airbus A350 Regional jet displacing an A330 with the older 2009 seats on a daily basis.

From 1st July 2019

All flights operate daily

This will see the SQ223/214 flights sporting the new seats. It’s a mid morning departure from Changi arriving into Perth shortly after lunchtime and an early evening departure back to Singapore with late evening touchdown, ideal for a host of flight connections to Europe and Japan in the busy midnight departure rush.

Unlike the upcoming June change on the Perth route, which sees the much wider long-haul 2006 Business Class seats replaced with the latest regional variant, this flight is replacing an A330 with the older 2-2-2 regional product.

The change also adds 10 more Business Class seats to the route per day in each direction (and 8 more in Economy, if that’s your thing), which should hopefully improve KrisFlyer award availability.

Here are the KrisFlyer redemption rates you’ll pay by cabin on this route.

The new Regional Business Class

Have we mentioned this new seat over the last year or so? Ok so you may be bored of hearing about it, but we’re going to tell you again. Singapore Airlines is installing what other airlines consider long-haul grade Business Class seats in its regional aircraft.

These are fast appearing on newly delivered Airbus A350 Regional and Boeing 787-10 planes, progressively replacing older A330s and regional 777s.

It’s quite a shift change from before, with 100% aisle access in a 1-2-1 configuration with high levels of privacy and fully flat beds. Do we need to sell these seats any more than they sell themselves over the decade-old design they are replacing? Probably not.

We did try them out on the 787-10 though, a couple of times in fact, and will be supplementing those experiences with an A350 Regional review soon.

Click here to read our full review of the 2018 Regional Business Class (787-10)

2018 RJ product deployment

There has been a recent drive in the rollout of the latest Business Class seats to concentrate on routes that already feature the new product on at least one daily flight.

Seoul now sees full 2018 RJ seats, with the exception of a single flight with the long-haul products, and we see the same pattern on the Brisbane route.

Cities like Adelaide, Fukuoka, Nagoya and Bengaluru now only see these seats in Business Class, while Bangkok and Bali are being ramped up with around half of all services featuring the new product on those routes already.

This is starting to leave us in little doubt about the strategy for deployment of these new seat products. Singapore Airlines likes consistency, where it can achieve it, and it is striving to do so with the latest Regional Business Class seats on a route-by-route basis.

With a single flight (SQ225/224) the last domino to fall on the Perth route, we predict the entire route will see 2018 Regional Business Class seats by the end of the year.

Sizing up the competition

Striving towards an all 2018 RJ service on the route also makes competitive sense for Singapore Airlines. Oneworld rival Qantas flies the same route once per day using its Airbus A330-200 with 28 flat-bed Thompson Aero Business Class seats in an all aisle access 1-2-1 configuration.

This is a popular product (when it works!), so by offering additional Business Class options on the route with a similar standard SIA can keep the competition at bay.

Summary

With more than a dozen Singapore Airlines aircraft already fitted with the 2018 Regional Business Class seat and more to come this year, consolidating the product on specific routes seems to be the latest deployment strategy.

With three out of four daily flights on the Perth route equipped by July it’s not only great news for regular flyers to and from Western Australia, who also have a flat-bed option with Qantas, it’s a good sign in our opinion that the final SIA flight will change across in the coming months too.

We have updated our 2018 RJ Tracker Page with the latest information following these changes on the Perth route. It shows you where you can find these new Business Class seats on the SIA network route by route, flight number by flight number.

Of course you can see which seats are flying across the entire network on our updated Business Class seats by route page too.

(Cover Image: Singapore Airlines)