Back in October 2024, we reported that Singapore Airlines had begun rolling out detailed 3D seat maps at the seat selection stage, letting you pan around your chosen seat before committing to it. A few months later, in March 2025, the airline went a step further with a full virtual cabin walk-through.
Both features, though, were limited to a single aircraft type – the Boeing 777-300ER.
And then, for well over a year, nothing. No new types, no wider rollout, no additional walk-throughs.
We’d expressed our hope at the time that the feature would spread across the fleet, but as the months ticked by with the 777-300ER standing alone, and no publicity of the feature from SIA, it started to look like a one-off experiment the airline had quietly decided against pursuing.
Happily, that’s no longer the case.
More types added
In recent weeks Singapore Airlines has added the 3D seat presentation to four more aircraft types at the seat selection stage:
- Airbus A350 Medium Haul (A350 MH)
- Airbus A350 Ultra Long Range (A350 ULR)
- Boeing 737-8 MAX
- Boeing 787-10
That leaves only the Airbus A350 Long Haul (A350 LH) and the Airbus A380 still to have the feature added, so the fleet-wide rollout we’d hoped for looks well on its way.
There are a few caveats, which we’ll come to. But first, a proper recap for anyone who missed our earlier coverage, or who’s forgotten what this tool actually does in the year or so since we last wrote about it.
What are these 3D seat maps?
One of the most common questions we get from readers is which seat to pick on a given Singapore Airlines flight, and for years that was sometimes hard to judge from the airline’s old 2D seat maps, which told you very little about privacy, or whether you’d actually get a window or what its alignment would be relative to the seat itself.
Things improved a great deal in mid-2022, when aeroLOPA added detailed seat maps for the entire SIA fleet, giving a much clearer picture of seat positioning and those all-important window locations.
The 3D seat maps take it a step further again. They’re the work of Spanish design agency 3D SeatMapVR, whose products are also used by the likes of Emirates, Etihad and Finnair, so this is a proven bit of kit.
When you reach the seat selection stage of a booking on one of the supported aircraft, you can now pan around your chosen seat as though you’re already sitting in it, getting a real sense of its placement in the cabin, how private it is, and how it aligns with the window.
You can also opt to view the seat from the aisle, as though you’re standing next to it.
A few nice touches round it out:
- You can zoom in and out to inspect the finer details.
- A cabin lighting toggle simulates a night flight, so you can see how the seat looks with the lights down (now only available on the Boeing 777-300ER cabin walk-through).
- There’s an ambient sound option which, rather than piping in roaring engines, call bells and galley clatter, simply plays Singapore Airlines’ boarding music while you look around.
The real value is in what it reveals.
On the 777-300ER, for instance, the map knows that seats 31A and 31C are missing a window entirely, the sort of quirk that’s easy to miss on a flat 2D map but is glaringly obvious the moment you’re ‘sitting’ there or standing alongside in 3D.
That same benefit now extends to the newly added types, where a few similarly awkward seats are much easier to spot in advance.
The virtual cabin walk-through (still 777-300ER only)
The March 2025 enhancement took things beyond individual seats, adding a full virtual walk-through of the cabin.
You can access it directly on the SIA website’s 777-300ER fleet page, under the ‘Explore our cabins in 3D’ section. From there you can step aboard in any cabin class, walk down the aisle jumping from row to row, move freely between cabins without returning to a menu, and drop into selected seats to examine features like privacy dividers, footrests and entertainment screens up close.
It’s genuinely useful for judging things like row alignment and windowless seats (19A and 21A in Business Class, for example, are very nearly windowless) and the walk-through shows you exactly that before you book.
Frustratingly, though, this walk-through remains exclusive to the 777-300ER. None of the four newly added types have it yet – they’ve gained the individual seat view only, not the full cabin tour. More on that below.
Four more types, at the seat selection stage
For now, the four new aircraft types get the individual 3D seat view when you reach the seat selection stage of a booking, the same feature the 777-300ER has had since late 2024, now simply available on more of the fleet.
Here’s a look at the new types that have been added.
Boeing 737-8 MAX
The narrow-body 737-8 MAX is arguably the most interesting addition, if only because it’s the type most readers have the least sense of.
The 3D view of its peculiar 2-2, 1-1, 2-2 Business Class gives a much better feel for the cabin than a row of flat rectangles ever did.
Boeing 787-10 and Airbus A350 Medium Haul
The Boeing 787-10 and the Airbus A350 MH share Singapore Airlines’ 2018 regional Business Class product, and both now benefit from the 3D treatment.
That’s handy given how often these two types turn up on the airline’s shorter routes around Asia, plus a fair chunk of longer routes too including Brisbane and Riyadh.
Airbus A350 ULR
The Ultra Long Range A350 is the pick of the bunch for spotting cabin quirks.
It’s a unique two-cabin aircraft, featuring Business Class and Premium Economy, with no Economy Class at all.
Built for SIA’s marathon USA non-stops, its layout throws up a couple of seats that are well worth knowing about.
First, the solo Premium Economy seats towards the rear. As the cabin narrows in the last few rows, the usual pairings give way to single seats, a quiet win for solo travellers who’d rather not sit next to a stranger for 18-odd hours, and exactly the sort of thing the 3D view helps you visualise.
Second, and this is a real hidden gem, seat 10A.
In the ULR’s 1-2-1 Business Class layout, it sits as a solo window seat in a row of its own (the ULR is the only aircraft in the fleet with ’10A’), a rare and rather private spot that’s difficult to appreciate from a 2D map, but immediately obvious in 3D.
What’s still missing
As welcome as this expansion is, three issues are still apparent.
It’s browser-only. Just as before, you’ll need to be on a browser (e.g. a desktop one) to see these 3D seat views. The functionality still hasn’t made it into the SingaporeAir mobile app, even for the Boeing 777-300ER, more than a year and a half after it first appeared.
No walk-through beyond the 777-300ER. The four new types have the individual seat view but not the full cabin walk-through, which remains a 777-300ER exclusive for now.
Two types to go. On this system, the Airbus A350 LH and the Airbus A380 are the only aircraft still without any 3D view at all. Given the direction of travel lately, we’d expect both to follow before long, though as it happens the A380 already has a virtual tour of a different sort, which we’ll come to next.
Here’s where things stand across the fleet on the main 3D seat map system:
- Seat view + full walk-through: Boeing 777-300ER
- Seat view only:, Airbus A350 MH, Airbus A350 ULR Boeing 737-8 MAX, Boeing 787-10
- Neither (yet): Airbus A350 LH, Airbus A380
A second, separate virtual-tour system
Here’s where things get a little muddled. Alongside the 3D seat maps on its main website, Singapore Airlines runs an entirely separate set of virtual cabin tours over on its SilverKris site – and, curiously enough, these aren’t linked from the fleet pages at all.
SilverKris’s ‘Explore Our Cabins’ page offers just two of them – a 360° tour of the Airbus A380, and a ‘virtual journey’ through the Boeing 737-8 MAX.
Like the fleet-page 3D SeatMapVR walk-through, the Boeing 737-8 MAX tour uses computer-generated renders rather than actual cabin photography. The real difference is in how it’s delivered.
It’s a 360° panorama you pan around, dotted with tappable hotspots that call out features like the seat, its privacy and the dining.
The A380 tour is billed simply as a ‘360° experience’ and takes a similar form.
What makes this interesting is that it does cover the A380, one of the two types the main 3D system still lacks, along with the Boeing 737-8 MAX.
So depending on how you count it, the A380 does have an immersive cabin tour after all – it’s just delivered and hosted separately, and seemingly tucked away where almost nobody will stumble across it.
Which leaves a question we can’t yet answer. Is this standalone, SilverKris-hosted style of tour the template Singapore Airlines intends to roll out more widely, or will the carrier instead extend the Boeing 777-300ER’s integrated 3D SeatMapVR walk-through across the rest of the fleet?
For now the airline is running both approaches in parallel, and it’s far from clear which, if either, becomes the standard.
Why it’s worth using
For all the caveats, this is a useful tool, and one we’d encourage you to make the most of.
Choosing a seat on Singapore Airlines has historically involved a fair amount of guesswork around privacy, row alignment and window positioning – the very things a flat 2D map is worst at conveying.
Being able to ‘sit’ in a seat before you book cuts straight through that, whether you’re weighing up a couple of paid seat options, deciding where to put a travelling companion, or simply trying to avoid the one seat in the cabin with no window!
It pairs neatly with aeroLOPA’s seat maps, which remain available for every type in the fleet and are still the quickest way to get the lie of the land, with the 3D view then letting you drill more closely into the specific seat you’re eyeing up.
Summary
After a long and slightly puzzling pause, Singapore Airlines has extended its 3D seat maps to four more aircraft types, with the Airbus A350 MH, Airbus A350 ULR, Boeing 737-8 MAX and Boeing 787-10 now boasting the feature, at the seat selection stage.
Only the A350 LH and the A380 now lack the benefit, and with momentum clearly back behind the rollout, we’d expect both to be added in due course, ideally along with the full cabin walk-through (still a Boeing 777-300ER exclusive) and, hopefully, support within the mobile app.
Muddying the picture a little, Singapore Airlines is also running a separate, standalone 360° tour system on its SilverKris site, which already covers the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 737-8 MAX. Quite how the airline intends to bring these two parallel approaches together, if at all, remains to be seen.
In the meantime, if you’re booking one of the newly supported types on a desktop browser, it’s well worth a look when making your seat selection.
(Cover Photo: Shutterstock)