astera

Wrong assumption - I fly various airlines, in fact SQ hasn't been the carrier on my recent 15+ flights and my status with them has evaporated.

Seems like you simply hold some weird grudge against SQ and aren't able to make an unbiased opinion.

bcworld

Lots of confusing answers in this thread!

Based on what you've said it sounds like you would fly on Virgin Australia to Perth and Singapore Airlines from Perth to Singapore to London. So any talk about Virgin Atlantic is irrelevant here.

I understand VA have now relocated to a new terminal beside the international bit, so there wouldn't be any crappy transfer bus like there was before.

Just be aware if you did the same journey in reverse you'd need to clear customs and immigration at Perth and recheck your bags, rather than first seeing them again in Brisbane.

Beoz

Someone with a grudge would give them grief without reason. I gave plenty of them.

Out of the 6 airlines I have flown long all recently here is the order 1 - 6.

1. Qantas
2. Etihad
3. BA
4. Emirates
5. Singapore
6. KLM

Oh I should add, bit of a crapper with the bassinet on Singapore. Because they are so trigger happy on the fasten seat belt signs, you need to keep pulling your baby in and out of the bassinet. Not very pleasant for long haul settlement of the little thing.

astera

Not really. Apart from the bassinet.

Best value: Scoot

Other than that...

1. Singapore Airlines
2. British Airways
3. Finnair
4. Lufthansa
5. Others...

I flew Etihad on their Brisbane route before they upgraded to the 787 and it was the tightest, most-claustrophobic experience ever.

KLM was good though I only hopped onboard for part of their long journey.

Actually for the money I reckon Scoot is worthy of the #1 tag. Nothing even comes close in terms of value, and even if their prices were identical with Etihad I would still choose Scoot (as mentioned I haven't flown on Etihad's Dreamliner so maybe things have improved greatly).

Yeah, that is true. Another issue is additional luggage that some airlines charge by the (extra) bag, whereas others charge it by the... kg.

BEVS

Yup. Weird stuff.

We fly economy.
with flight times and price playing a huge part..

To add into the mix .

My husband has to fly home every 18 months as we must fund him seeing his Mum. Yes. Must. Our choice to move away . Our price to pay.

Lufthansa on code share has beaten the odds every single time. Price. Flight timings & the service has been just the same as for anyone else.

Y'know. when you fly home to see precious family , do you really care how it is. It is all the same from what we have experienced.

Just do the hours and get there.

astera

My next long-haul flights to Europe (albeit from Singapore) are booked on Lufthansa.

Great airline, and I sleep well knowing that German techs are looking after the mechanical bird.

At the end of the day I too would look a price as well, and, more importantly, connecting airports and connection times.

Pollyana

Must admit over the years on thsi and otehr forums, Singapore is probably the airline that always seems to vome out on top. Very very rare to see a bad review on the UK-Aus route.

Beoz

Garuda rates pretty highly these days too but a lot won't fly them because of the history. I flew them a few months back and rate their service and the state of their new planes highly. I highlighted the bad in Singapore.

1. Staff like robots. Not great if you require something out of the norm and expect them to be able to deal with it. Thank the Singaporean education system.

2. TV's aren't on for landing and take off. If you have a good 45 minute landing queue at Heathrow it gets a little dull revolving around landing funnels. The entertainment is a little light on good stuff too.

3. Seat belt sign on at any minor bump which is a massive drawback if you have a baby in a bassinet.

If you can deal with all that then Singapore is fine but as a long haul passenger, apart from not crashing, I think those items pretty high on the big ticket items. Everyone is different though

astera

Right. Courteous, efficient, perfect every time. Must have been an absolutely terrible experience for you...

Oh my, what a deal-breaker. No other airline allows you to use headphones during take-off or landing so what the heck are you watching if you cannot get the audio?

That is true. And the bassinets aren't as big as on Lufthansa for instance. LH has been tops here in my experience.

Pollyana

Never watch the TVs anyway, I run the flight maps but thats all, so that wouldn't bother me. Got my ipod and my kindle, they do me And having no kids the bassinet issue wouldn't affect me either - I also keep my belt done up the whole time anyhow.
But as you say, we're all different and all have our own flight preferences.

OzTennis

Obviously it is a personal experience and we each have different requirements hence the differing views.

Personally we want an airline which flies direct from Scotland (not via LHR or LGW), has suitable flight timings in terms of take off and arrival times, delays for connecting flights etc, takes us from door to door (J class) and then we take service, food and so on into account. We don't watch movies or play games so the on board 'entertainment' is immaterial to us. From well over 30 return flights between UK and Oz this would be my ranking:

1 Emirates
2 Cathay Pacific
3 Malaysia (yep, I know but 3 very good flights with them in the past)
3 Lauda (sadly don't fly anymore although taken over by AA)
4 Singapore
5 Qantas
6 BA

We haven't tried Etihad yet and won't because they fly from Edinburgh (rather than Glasgow for Emirates); they charge nearly £1K more p.p than Emirates for J class and don't include chaffeur pick up at home to GLA and from MEL to our home as EK does).

Once we flew SQ and due to an air traffic controllers strike in MAN we missed our connection in SIN and got put onto an EK flight which was far superior to what we'd had on SQ imho.

Emirates does a nice 7/7/7 as I call it - roughly 7 hrs GLA-DXB; 7 hrs DXB-KUL and 7 hours KUL-MEL (with SIN rather than KUL on the way back). The time in the J lounge in GLA, DXB, KUL, SIN and MEL is well used for showering en-route and nice food and drink.

On the day the new Emirates lounge opened in GLA about a year ago a person took this picture of the grub they had before their flight (n.b. wasn't me but a Flyer Talk Emirates forum regular)

BEVS

No idea what J class is but the pic of nice grub on proper plates looks posh.

Agree with this. It is preferable for MrBEVS if the final landing is into Birmingham as his family are in Wolverhampton & better if the start flight is from CHristchurch South Island NZ and not Auckland.

Beoz

Yep. Its all about what tickles your fancy. Some colleagues of mine always fly SG because they fancy Singaporean girls.

Singapore is the best layover airport in the world in my opinion. Beats Dubai. That said the FF lounge in Dubai is quite neat. Elevators from the lounge straight to the gate.

Beoz

I've never flown Malaysian but I do hear good things. It must be remembered that their recent incidents are probably bad luck more than incompetence.

astera

Business class is often referred to in short as "J" or "C" as those are the fare classes most commonly used for biz. Similarly "F" is first class and "Y" is economy.

That pic from the lounge does look very good.