Frequent flyer

So, I’m back in Japan. Probably my last time here for awhile, considering the next school holiday’s quite near to when Ailin finishes her contract anyway. I’ll probably try to do my Europe holiday during that time – Anyone interested in visiting Germany/Austria/Czech republic this June? =P

Anyway, this time I’d opted to fly by Air China, since it’s a lot cheaper than Singapore Airlines (nearly half the price), plus I’d get to use the lounge while in transit anyway so I figured the wait wouldn’t be too bad. Anyway, Air China operates at Terminal 1 in Changi Airport, which made it the first time I was flying from there in awhile.

The thing that struck me at Terminal 1 was the availability of a check-in lounge for business/first class passengers (and also to Star Alliance Gold members). I’m ever-mindful of how I’ll be losing the Gold status after this June (possibly forever), so I thought I’d go check it out. Basically it’s just an area full of comfortable seats for rich people to sit at instead of standing in the traditional queues. Frankly, I’d thought it quite a waste of space/money given that non-economy passengers already have priority queues of their own, but I guess if someone offers you a comfortable seat rather than standing in line for ten minutes, you’ll sit, right?

I’d actually got bumped up to a business class seat for the Singapore-Beijing leg of the flight, although I was supposed to be getting economy class service. Still, that got me pretty excited, especially since that was the leg I was expecting to sleep through. Unfortunately, Air China’s business class seats had nothing on Singapore Airlines’ version – maybe this isn’t the case for other aircraft in their fleet, but the business class seat I got was essentially a roomy economy seat. It was slightly better for sleeping than the standard economy seat, so I’m not really complaining, but I just can’t see why anyone would pay good money for this.

Although I was promised economy class food, I got the same meal as everyone else around me – either I got the business food too, or everyone in the business section that day was an upgraded passenger. I’m going with the former assumption, but if so – the food’s pretty much the same as an economy class meal! The only real difference I noticed between this and the economy meal I had later was the provision of a wet napkin (with the business meal).

[Edit: I later got bumped up into the full service business class and have since revised my opinion of it.]

Beijing’s airport was actually pretty nice – I wasn’t all that interested in exploring it though, and headed straight for Air China’s business lounge there. It was alright, I guess. Breakfast was being served (yay!) and there was a nice variety there, although I’d found (unfortunately) that the western food like hash browns and scrambled eggs were soggy and not particularly good.

Tea eggs were a nice touch, though.

I’ve been in Japan for nearly a week now, but I’ve been caught up, uh… playing Mass Effect. I’ve been getting bored of computer games recently, but I must say that this game’s so good, it’s really revived my interest in them (looks like it was just a phase – I was merely waiting for the right one to come along). It’s so good that I plan to purchase it for myself, though probably ebaying a Thai copy or something (they’re a lot cheaper, though the packaging and documentation are all non-English). Shockingly enough, the MacBook Pro handles Windows gaming extremely well – I suspect even better than my desktop PC does! Money well spent, then.

Anyway, with my newly-acquired Elite Gold status, I was able to check out the lounge at Changi Airport before flying, though they actually do have a separate lounge for the business/first-class passengers and for us frequent cattle-class flyers, so all I saw was the inferior one.

At the entrance, a Singapore Girl cutout welcoming you to the Gold lounge. Wonder if they use real ones instead for the Silver Kris lounge (the one for business/first-class flyers)?

And, well, it was pretty good for an ‘inferior’ lounge! Better than the one I was in at Manchester Airport, anyway. It was still essentially rather basic – an area with lots of comfy armchairs and some food/drinks. But the spread was quite a bit better than Manchester’s – they were serving baked chicken with potatoes, I think! Wonder if it’s because I was in Manchester during its breakfast hours? There was also quite an extensive drinks section (which was present at Manchester too actually, just that I didn’t really feel like drinking in the morning).

So I grabbed myself some ‘Indian potato salad’ and Tiger beer, and proceeded to do some lounging. Which mainly consisted of using the internet on my laptop using the free Wireless@SG. Not too shabby, but frankly, the lounge is a luxury I think I can live without quite easily. Unlike the nice comfy business class seats – those are something I definitely did miss on my flight to Japan on the A380!

The A380 is supposed to be the world’s largest passenger plane, and the seats on it (for all three classes of travel) have been upgraded as compared to older standard flights. Economy class essentially gets slightly more legroom (supposedly – I didn’t really notice it) and a larger viewing screen – this change I definitely did notice! The viewing area’s a lot bigger now, though I did wonder if this was necessarily a good thing, since I was (embarrassingly enough) watching Sex and the City on the way to Tokyo, which wasn’t exactly something I wanted to broadcast to my fellow passengers. Hey – with the movie showing in cinemas now, I was curious what the hype was about! Didn’t really find it all that great though, but that might be because I was watching random mid-season episodes rather than from the beginning.

I did like that the controller was now holstered below the screen rather than the side of the seat – I used to accidentally press a button while watching shows previously (yes, with my fat butt). The controller also now comes with a QWERTY keyboard for some word-processing and other productivity programs built into the console, but would it have killed them to add some basic web-browsing capabilities?

All in all, quite a comfortable flight, but not that much better than a standard SQ flight. Nothing I’d pay extra money for – good thing it costs the same thing as their standard flights, then!