On the Way to Asia
Monday, July 7th, 2008Voted the best airline in the world by you, the readers of Global Traveler, I travel today to Asia on Singapore Airlines. I will be flying on their all-business class flight from Newark to Singapore with 100 of the new business class seats that have very interesting designs. The plane is an Airbus 340-500 and I believe the flight is about 18 hours non-stop.
This design will be highlighted in the September issue in our Business and First Class Survey. Its pitch, by normal standards, would indicate this to be a slanted flat seat rather than 180 degrees fully flat. But SQ (2 digit code of Singapore Airlines for those who don’t know) had an ingenious design that has a very wide seat, tapering to a more narrow head and foot so that the head and foot area are shared. Of course, these areas are capsulated so head and foot are not near each other, but this allows SQ to fit in 100 business class seats on this plane. With fuel prices, getting the most passengers on this flight is essential to its success.
On this flight, I plan about six hours of work and about 10 hours of sleep. Flat is the key to sleeping, and on my Asiana Airlines return flight from Seoul last March, I slept 10 of the 12.5 hours to New York. “Like a baby,” said one of the flight attendants.
(Posing with the Asiana flight attendants, voted best in the world by readers)
My trip includes a brief stop and meetings in Singapore and then several days of meetings in Hong Kong. Stay tuned!
-Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO













