There isn’t a lot of good news these days when it comes to A380s, although Singapore Airlines has an exception. I wrote for the first time last November about how the airline planned to reconfigure all of the remaining A380s with new cabins and there is now an update on that front as more progress is made.
Singapore Airlines keeps 12 Airbus A380s
We recently learned of Singapore Airlines’ future fleet plans for the Airbus A380 as the airline will fly 12 of these aircraft in the long term:
Singapore Airlines will fly 12 A380s in the coming years
Singapore Airlines is upgrading all A380 cabins
In 2017, Singapore Airlines introduced a brand new interior for its A380, the first cabin refresh on these aircraft in about a decade.
While Singapore Airlines has always announced that it will reconfigure existing A380s with these cabins, the pandemic is causing many airlines to stop investing in cabin upgrades in order to save money.
As reported by Mainly Miles late last year, Singapore Airlines continues to configure its A380 with new cabinsand chances are all A380s will have new cabins when they return to heaven.
Where is Singapore Airlines’ new A380 cabin project?
- Between 2017 and 2018, five A380s were delivered with the new cabins
- Four A380s have already been reconfigured with the new cabins and a retrofit has been completed in the last few weeks
- Another A380 recently started its retrofit project, which is expected to take several months
- After that, only two A380s have to be reconfigured, so that the process will be completed in a few years at the latest. Singapore Airlines could reconfigure multiple aircraft at the same time. In this case, it could be done even faster
In any case, there’s nothing shocking here – the airline had already announced plans to reconfigure aircraft, but of course it was also possible that the pandemic would cause the airline to backtrack. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case – not only has the airline recently completed retrofitting an aircraft, but is now starting to retrofit an additional aircraft.
I would bet that when the A380s get back to the skies they will likely all have the new cabins.
The newly configured A380s in Singapore have huge suite bathrooms
When will Singapore Airlines fly A380 again?
Perhaps the bigger question is when will Singapore Airlines resume A380 flights? The airline has suspended the availability of all suites until October 2021. So it seems that the A380 is definitely not making a comeback before then. That being said, even that schedule seems very optimistic at this point.
There will simply be no demand for A380s until the Singapore borders are reopened to any significant extent, and that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Singapore leaders are suggesting that a sterile business travel bubble is “the new normal,” which leads me to believe that there will be no useful point in reopening borders in 2021.
Conference rooms with airtight glass panes are “the new normal” in Singapore
What do Singapore Airlines’ new A380 cabins look like?
Shortly after its introduction, I flew back and forth on the new Singapore Airlines A380 – I flew from Singapore to Sydney in the new business class and from Sydney to Singapore in the new suites. Overall, I was somewhat impressed by both products, but not blown away.
Business class was a slight improvement over the old business class product. I rank it number nine on my list of the 10 best business class seats in the world. The seat is spacious but has the disadvantage that you have to sleep at an angle to the side of the aircraft to fully stretch your legs.
The new A380 Business Class from Singapore Airlines
A cool new feature is that the center seats in each row can form a double bed, which is nice when you’re traveling with someone.
The new A380 Business Class from Singapore Airlines
The new A380 suites in Singapore look fantastic, and there are only six of them in a 1: 1 configuration. Unfortunately I found that the design was a bit of style over substance, so parts of it disappointed me.
The new A380 Suites from Singapore Airlines
The new A380 Suites from Singapore Airlines
Probably the biggest disadvantage of the new Singapore Airlines suites is how much capacity is being reduced. While the old suite cabin had 12 seats, the new cabin only has six seats. As you’d expect, getting award seats is also much more difficult.
Bottom line
As Singapore Airlines shrinks its A380 fleet to a dozen, there is a silver lining that all of those aircraft will soon have new cabins. Nine A380s are already outfitted with the new cabins, one is currently being reconfigured, and the remaining two should be reconfigured over the next few years, likely before the planes would otherwise return to the skies.
Unfortunately, while this is good news overall, it doesn’t do very well for the availability of Suites Awards, which will be much harder to come by (especially for two passengers).
