Greetings, everyone. Apologies for last week's unexpected closure of the cafe, but a trip to India with limited Internet connectivity and a limited ability to stay 100% healthy made for a tough task opening the cafe doors last week. I love curries....it's just that sometimes they don't love me back, apparently.
Anyway, let's move on shall we? Onto a long-awaited journey for the Barista in what I used to think was the most ridiculous-looking business class seat in the sky, on board Singapore Airlines. This not-so-new-now product certainly has made waves in the community that travels further up front of the plane, as the advertisements for the product has been exhaustive in the Australian market. Most everyone has seen them: pictures of smiling people curled up in what looked like a sofa-sized piece of furniture, obviously enjoying their experience in what is likely accurately billed as "the world's biggest business class seat."
And that's where I struggled with this product somewhat. Yes, it's big, but is it good?
Certainly the pictures convey the sense of space that you do feel when you get to your seat. Compared to other airlines' products, the width of the seat seems almost ridiculous. And as you sit down and figure out where to put your elbows to read your pre-flight newspaper or book, you realise indeed this sucker is as wide as a soccer goal. And like a soccer goal, it may look easy to score points but the reality is something else altogether.
Let's cut to the chase: as a seat, it's pretty lousy, actually. You can't figure out which side to sit on as it's so wide, there's not a very good recline or foot rest setting, and for a tall fellow like myself if you cross your legs your knee bumps into the shell of the seat in front of you. You can tuck yourself into one corner of the seat and prop your feet up on the built-in "shelves" that are in the back of the seat in front of you as a sort-of ottoman, but that is only comfortable for so long. However as compensation there is an amazingly large screen for movies and TV shows and you can plug your iPod directly into the entertainment system and listen to your own tunes if you want. That's cool.
But when it's time for lights out - then things start to change.
It starts with changing the seat itself. With one flip of a lever, the huge backrest folds over to lay flat and magically the aforementioned shelves become integrated with the back of the seat to form what looks like an acre of space. Flat, flat space. Like the Australian Outback or Great Plains of America, just seemingly uninterrupted great swathes of space. Unreal.
And when you lay down, although your head and your feet end up at an angle across that great open space (your feet are near the window and your head is near the aisle) there is still so much room to toss and turn it's pretty remarkable, actually. Yes, your feet are in sort of a "cave" tucked into the seat shell in front of you, but unlike other "lie-flat" products (this means you Qantas) you actually have room for them.
So on an all-too-short 5 hour, overnight flight from Delhi to Singapore where sleep was THE only thing on my mind - I loved it. On a 10+ hour daytime flight? I might bring some extra sleeping pills....
DISCLAIMER: The Barista appreciates that ANY business class product beats travelling in economy 8 days out of 7. Therefore my review was in the spirit of assisting companies understand the return on investment for those that do spend the money for the well-being and productivity of their employees travelling for business. Everyone OK with that? :-)
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