Arriving at the Queen’s Terminal, or Terminal 2 at London’s Heathrow Airport, I was pleasantly surprised to see that no queues had formed for this evening flight on Singapore Airlines bound for Singapore. For the record, I am personally not a fan of automated check-in kiosks as they lack the personal touch, and I am glad that Singapore Airlines continues to provide manned desks here at Heathrow, even as other airlines have commenced the use of unmanned kiosks for check-in and bag tagging.
With loads of time, I proceeded to the SilverKris lounge for some refreshments prior to boarding. It was pretty empty when I arrived, but got a little packed as more passengers arrived while the evening progressed. There is a separate section for First and Suites Class passengers with full table service dining.
The staff at the lounge normally announces when the flight is ready for boarding, but I decided to head to the gate a little earlier to avoid rushing with the crowd.
At about half an hour prior to the scheduled departure time, the gate staff called First and Business Class passengers for boarding via the priority lane. Boarding proceeded smoothly and I found myself in my seat 18A in no time. It was a relatively packed flight in Business Class this time, which was expected, as I can’t think of a better way to travel in Business from London to Singapore.
Dinner and a light meal would be served on this flight.
We pushed back on time and took a little longer to taxi to the runway due to some ATC congestion, but we were eventually on our way.
As we climbed out of London towards the east, I admired the setting sun behind us.
Dinner service soon commenced, beginning with satay, served with onion, cucumber and spicy peanut sauce.
This was followed by an antipasto appetizer, which consisted of parma ham, mozzarella cheese and melon.
For the main course, I chose the seared tournedos of beef in green peppercorn jus, sautéed mushrooms, carrot and gratin potatoes. If you’re intending to have beef on board, it’s always a safer bet to have it for your first meal, and it should taste much better as it did in my case.
For dessert I had the tiramisu glace, which was essentially tiramisu ice cream with cocoa powder and chocolate garnish, a perfect finale to the dinner service.
It was soon time for bed, well, according to UK time at least. The 2013 Business Class seat converts into a fully lie flat bed, an excellent product overall. Singapore Airlines does not provide any sleepwear for its Business Class passengers, so I decided to change into some not-so-revealing clothes for a more comfortable and restful sleep.
After over 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep, I woke up to the light meal before landing, which started with some sliced fresh fruit and fruit juice.
This was followed by some yoghurt and a lovely croissant.
For the main course, I had the baked crepe with scrambled eggs and chives, chicken sausage, tomato and potatoes. While the meal was timed for breakfast in the UK, it was really late in the afternoon by the time we commenced our descent into Singapore. Other than the meal selections being more of the breakfast variety, the portions were more than sufficient.
It was a smooth descent into Singapore and we touched down ahead of schedule due to favourable winds. This was yet another awesome experience on board Singapore Airlines.
