38 AUSTRALIAN AVIATION DECEMBER 2017
was comfortable for both sleeping and
sitting.
“We have to design to fit both,
comfortable for the seat and
comfortable for the bed. We tried
several different types of cushions and
combinations of cushions.”
Some have quibbled at the lack of
onboard amenities that feature on the
A380s on other airlines such as bars,
showers or even a duty free gallery.
In response, SIA senior vice
president for products and services
Marvin Tan said this latest iteration of
SIA’s A380 cabin was the result of its
customer research, where passengers
rated factors such as the quality of the
cabin crew ahead of these other features.
“It’s a bit of a tradeoff because on
the one hand you have customers who
say this is what they like but on the
other hand you have customers say your
crew give fantastic service and I don’t
need that,” Tan explained when asked
about the lack of a bar for passengers in
business and Suites.
“It takes up space. I’d rather have a
space to store my laptop, my iPad, my
tablets etc.
“We feel that because we are very
confident about our cabin crew service
in terms of anything that is food and
beverage related we should let our
crew do the hard work for our premium
passengers.”
While suites and business class are
on the upper deck, the lower deck will
feature premium economy between
Doors 1 and 2, with economy stretching
from Door 2 through to the tail.
SIA will offer passengers in these
two cabins, as well as those in business
and suites, an enhanced inflight
entertainment system “mykrisworld”,
where members of the airline’s frequent
flyer program Krisflyer will be able
to “bookmark” where they finished
watching one movie at the end of a
flight in order to pick up from where
they left off on their next flight.
Further, economy class passengers
will have a touchscreen IFE monitor
that eliminates the need for a separate
handset. The monitor is also larger than
what is flying on SIA’s A380s currently
at 11.1in, compared with 10.6in. The
seats, designed and built by Recaro,
also have a six-way headrest that offers
more neck support.
“Of course, we recognise to be
competitive in the market there are
certain space limitations that we have
to work with to enable seat density
but there are a lot of other areas of the
product you can invest,” Tan said.
Premium economy is the only
seat that will be the same on both
the new and old A380 layout. It was
manufactured by ZIM Flugsitz GmbH
and customised by JPA Design.FUTURE-PROOFING AT PLAY WITH
NFC READER
SIA has also installed a near-field
communicator (NFC) reader at all seats.
The technology will not be
utilised when flights commence on
December 18 between Sydney and
Singapore. Instead, the airline is still
mulling what is the best use for what
is becoming an increasingly common
form of contactless communication.
“We really don’t have a very
concrete plan yet on what we want to
use it for,” Tan said.
“Syncing, data transfer, things like
that can be part of the functionality.
But again, in those areas, it’s all just
concepts, ideas, plans at this point in
time.
“It takes a lot of time and it can be
quite costly to do work on the plane.
Once it starts flying, that’s it, you lose
the opportunity unless you want to
ground the plane which is not the best
thing to do, so some of these decisions
we have to make slightly ahead of the
curve in a way.”CHANGES MEAN CONSISTENT A380
CONFIGURATION
This new A380 configuration of 471
seats comprising six in Suites, 78 in
business, 44 in premium economy and
343 in economy will appear on five new
aircraft that were due to be delivered
between November and the end of 2018.
These five aircraft are replacing five
A380s being returned to lessors.And the 471-seat configuration will
also be retrofitted to 14 A380s, with the
program starting in late 2018 and due
to be completed in 2020.
This represents a capacity increase
of between seven per cent and 24
per cent from SIA’s two A380
configurations currently flying.
SIA plans to maintain its fleet
of A380s at 19 aircraft. However,
it will operate with a reduced A380
fleet until 2020 as older aircraft are
returned to lessors, new aircraft arrive
and others head to the workshop for
reconfiguration into the new layout.
At press time, SIA had eight
A380s with 379 seats (12 Suites, 86
business, 36 premium economy and
245 economy) and nine with 441 seats
(12 suites, 60 business, 36 premium
economy and 333 economy).
The airline expects to have two
A380s in the new 471-seat layout by
the end of calendar 2017, while three
of the five aircraft earmarked for
withdrawal will have gone.
Chief analyst at aviation thinktank
CAPA – Centre for Aviation Brendan
Sobie said the move to add more seats
should enable SIA to grow capacity, or
available seat kilometres (ASK), andThis is really
just the
beginning.
GOH CHOON PHONGSIA has managed to fit more
business class seats on its
reconfigured A380s thanks
to a more efficient design
that eliminates the flip-down
bed. It has also enabled those
travelling together in business
to have a double bed.ANDREW
WEST/SIA