Singapore Airlines to unveil new cabin products in November
The upcoming seats will be the first meaningful redesign of its long-haul business class in almost two decades
[SINGAPORE] Singapore Airlines (SIA) will be unveiling its highly anticipated next-generation cabin products, with its top-tiers of frequent fliers set to get a sneak preview in early November.
Travel hack website The MileLion, in a post published on Tuesday (Sep 1), wrote that selected Solitaire PPS and PPS Club members have received SIA’s invitations to the event that is touted as the “next chapter” in its travel experience.
Describing this as a “do-or-die time” for the national carrier, MileLion’s founder Aaron Wong explained that SIA has “fallen way behind” on its hardware.
Its rivals, including Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines and Qatar Airways, are already offering new business-class suites with privacy doors – a feature that SIA still lacks. The upcoming seats will be the first meaningful redesign of SIA’s long-haul business class in almost two decades, he noted.
Similarly, its first-class seats are not on a par with its peers’, he added.
Wong also noted that passengers in non-premium classes cannot connect their personal headphones to the screens via bluetooth, watch shows on high-resolution 4K screens, charge laptops with USB-C ports nor surf the net at broadband speeds.
All 34 Airbus A350-900LHs and seven Airbus A350-900ULRs will be refitted with new cabin products at a price tag of S$1.1 billion, with the works done in Singapore by SIA Engineering .
The A350-900 first-class and business-class seats will have a spacious layout and ergonomic elements – the same seat designs that will feature on SIA’s upcoming Boeing 777-9 aircraft, SIA said when it announced the investment in 2024.
The in-flight entertainment system across all cabin classes, as well as the in-flight entertainment screens in first class and business class, will also be upgraded.
SIA originally planned to launch its new cabin products on the Boeing 777-9 in 2021, but they are now expected to arrive in 2027 as Boeing has been delaying delivery.
On Wednesday at 3.18 pm, SIA shares were trading at S$6.70, down 0.9 per cent or S$0.06, while SIA Engineering was flat at S$3.10.
