No pics, alas, but hoping those who enjoyed the last flight will enjoy this one too:

A Smile and a Surprise on SQ318

When I return from Australia or Asia I always like to fly into Singapore Changi Airport the day before and spend the night in the airside Transit hotel in either Terminal One or Terminal Two, the SIA terminal. This way I get a good night’s sleep and am refreshed and ready to relax and enjoy the morning flight to London. The Budget Rooms are only £27 ($48) for a 12hour block which makes it excellent value.

(Note to plane spotters: Terminal One Transit Hotel has budget rooms with windows overlooking gates D41 – 49. Waken up, pull back the curtains and you may have the sharp end of your favourite aircraft pointing at you!)

Taking a long transit also means the chance to spend time enjoying the facilities of this renowned airport. There are open air terraces and gardens (for smokers and all you rich guys with posh cameras), shops galore, a free cinema open 24/7, bars with musicians, food courts, free internet, and an outdoor swimming pool at Terminal One where you can swim and have a beer. And, of course, planes, planes, planes!

As usual on this trip I enjoyed an excellent meal in the Asian food court in Terminal One and then spent time just watching the hustle and bustle of passengers and crew changes as they embarked, disembarked, transited or headed for immigration. I find it incredibly relaxing being airside at a great international airport. I am not in any rush. I can meander from gate to gate or terminal to terminal. I can relax and just savour the never ending flow of pax and crew and planes.

It’s the vignettes of life at SIN I enjoy observing so much. The harassed businessman. The couple in love. The folk quietly meditating by the carp ponds. The transit passengers racing from one connection to the other – silly sods, don’t they know they are missing out on one of the few genuinely relaxing airports to be in? The backpackers, blondes from Sweden and the Nordic countries, tanned, full of enthusiasm or shattered from too many beers the night before. The Brits in their shorts! The Oldies returning to, or visiting from, one side of the world and in transit to the other. Kids with their faces pressed against the windows. Every so often, the bright swathes of colour as yet another crocodile of crew in strange and exotic uniforms. The Asian ones all seemingly slim and petite and gorgeous, the BA & Qantas often with, how can I delicately put this, more robust and rounded figures! I do like to see a snowy-haired, slightly grizzled looking BA Captain (but I hate the silver stripes) leading his charges across the Terminal. They always look as if no weather problem on earth is going to stop them getting airborne. Sometimes you see these crews coming from opposite directions, as if about to converging on a collision course. But on land, just as the airways above, they pass smoothly past each other and continue on their way, just as they will be doing later at 33,000’.

Then there are various shop staff, the girls who smile and pounce on you at the perfume and duty free counters, the armed police and security, some of whom look about 16 but would, I suspect be capable of felling you with one chop of their delicate looking hands. The lovely ladies at the information desks, despatchers, airline representatives, the whoosh and occasional toot of the buggys carrying the ill, the lame or the lazy; the smart immigration officers (they have bowls of sweets and invite you to have one whilst they scan the landing card), the cleaners who mop and polish, oblivious to the sights and sounds outside.

I always feel a sense of privilege that I am there. Knowing I see what many do not. Happy to observe. Happy to know I too arrived but still have the excitement and expectations of departure to come.

Fascinating as this is in the daylight, it seems especially magical at night at this great Arial crossroads of the East. Navigation lights blink, service vehicles scurry around with flashing lights, cabins glow from within and illuminated tail fins of airlines we recognise, and some we may not, glide across the tops of building, come into view, park, stay awhile, start moving again and roar off once more into a dark sky. To watch all this from the garden at night, when the air is still humid and hot, with an ice cold beer in hand, is to truly marvel at the choreography of man and machine as everything comes together for yet another arrival or departure. Changi Airport is not somewhere to be rushed. Wise is the passenger or aviation enthusiast who lingers, pauses, breathes in the fumes and takes it all in.

It was time to get some sleep. Off I toddled to my room in the transit hotel and dropped off into the land of nod. I love being able to sleep here till 08.00, get up, shower and shave, yet still be at the departure gate by 08.45. For the seventh time in recent years I waited for the boarding call for SQ318, an SIA 747-400. I looked at my fellow passengers and played that well know game “who might be next to me?” Hopefully no-one, of course! Or maybe the nice slim blonde, seemingly travelling alone, seated on the far side quietly listening to something on her Walkman. Please not the overweight man sat eating something of a box. Nor the exuberated gang of Aussies lads good naturedly joshing each other in voices you could hear at the other end of the Terminal. To a man they looked as if they’d been raised on a diet of sun, surf and steaks. Were they, I wondered, off to “do” Europe for a year? Suddenly I hoped they were. For I too was once like that, excited, exuberant, in transit and changing planes to head Down Under for a year on the Great Adventure. It is hard, and unnatural, to try and contain such enthusiasm and excitement. “Good luck lads” I thought to myself and silently wished them well.

You just know you are in for a long thirteen, sometimes fourteen, hour flight when you take off for LHR home from SIN. Of all types of aircraft I still believe there is nothing quite as majestic as the slow, stately way a 747-400 taxis out to the start of the runway. A pause for some final checks. A slight surge of as the Queen of the Skies moves forwards. The surge of power grows into a mighty thrust as over 40 tons of metal, nuts, rivets, bolts, people, bags, cargo and waggling wings accelerates down the long runway. It seems to go on forever and then, just as you wonder if it will ever become airborne, effortlessly rises from the runway and soars off into the skies above.

I usually have a silly big grin on my face as this happens and remind myself of the immortal words an ex-Dan-Air steward once yelled out on an aged BAC 1-11 which used to rattle back and forth between LGW-BFS …”Burn rubber, baby.”

Heaven on SQ318 is an empty row, or at least discovering the seat next to you is empty. Once again this trip I was lucky. I was sitting in 64G and despite a virtually full load, 64F beside me remained unoccupied. Thank you, Dame Fortune! As always when I had boarded, and again later, I made sure to smile and say hello to the crew member at Door 5 Right, just behind me. Sophie, as her badge said, looked like an Angel sent to care just for me but, alas, my usual charm and “challenge” of seeing if I could persuade her to bring me some fizz from Business Class at some point did not work during this flight. Orange juice was the order of the day on this flight to begin with!

I settled down intending to enjoy a quiet flight, dipping in and out of the Krisflyer Wiseman 3000 entertainment system. What a system! An amazing choice of over 60 movies AVOD, more than 100 TV programmes, 225 music CDs, 12 music channels and interactive games etc. This has to be one of the best in the business for choice and selection. How on earth do people claim to be bored by flying when so much is on offer! I avoided the other side of the control, the telephone bit. It brings back a painful memory. You see, on the very first flight Down Under some years ago I confess I did imbibe far too much fizz between LHR and SIN. I also made an immediate connection that time and so imbibed more fizz (SIA had it free in economy in those days) on the sector to PER. Two hours out of Perth I decided to ring my friends to see if they were ready to leave and meet me yet. When the phone rang I immediately blabbered away about the fabulous SIA flight, the crew, the food, the how horrid Heathrow had been, what a great movie I’d watched etc. When I paused to draw breath a voice said, “How very interesting” and hung up. It was a wrong number. When I returned to the UK my credit card had a nice £16 something charge for the pleasure of telling a complete stranger how wonderful SIA is! I don’t do airborne phones anymore.

After a while some very jolly ladies in the row in front decided to seek my advice as they grappled with their Kris controls and asked for help to change channels from time to time. One was English. One was Welsh. And then there was me. This unlikely combination led to many an interesting exchange of our own lives as we stood and chatted or took our drinks over to the space beside Door 5 Right for a mini party.

I love the rhythm of a long haul flight, particularly SQ318. First, the issue of the headsets. Then the amenity kits containing eye shades, socks and a toothbrush. Next a short gap before a leisurely drinks run for those wishing a little something with the first meal. Being a daylight flight it chases the sun so the blinds tend to stay up for much longer, allowing natural daylight to shine in before the crew put the plane into “sleep” mode. I always order the AVOL (Asian Vegetarian meal) meals. Why? Well I enjoy them, find them easy to digest without getting bloated and you usually get extra fruit and stuff. Also SIA usually serve their special meals first. The advantage of this is (1) you usually get extra fruit as a course (2) by the time the proper meals come round you can ask if there are any spare puddings left or get your wines topped up again; and (3) the crew are pretty good at making sure the person in front of you puts their seat back into the upright position whilst you eat. This means you have a much longer period without the seat back of the seat in front being in your face if occupied! On a full flight this really can make quite a difference.

Onwards flew the mighty Megatop. The passengers settled down between services. A few crew appeared and silently slipped away upstairs into the crew rest area with bunks located in the roof over the last few rows. It looks like a coat closet or door to a toilet but slide it back and the dinkiest little staircase leads up to the roof space. One flight I rather cheekily climbed three quarters of a way up for a nosey, before the breaks began. But I got no further before there was a gently tugging at my trousers and an SIA Angel sweetly asking, “May I help you, Sir? You shouldn’t really be up there” Shame facedly I descended back, muttered my apologies and slunk back to my seat. But I digress….

The hours passed. A young mother, travelling alone with a toddler and a small nine month-old baby, constantly went back and forth to the toilets. As more people gathered this baby became the mascot of the rear cabin. Other mothers, grandmothers, stewardesses, all came to look at this enchanting baby who silently gazed at everyone with big open eyes, completely unaware he was journeying from one side of the world to the other. Soon, in order to give the Mother and toddler a break, this baby was being gently passed from granny to granny in this new extended family.

It was amazing to see tired, jaded passengers come back to life with smiles and energy as this tiny miracle was lovingly stroked or handed to the next surrogate granny. One of the stewards, clearly a father himself, came and held and gently caressed this small bundle of human life as if holding the most precious jewel in the world. It was a joy to see his beautiful brown face with a smile that would have lit up the world, and a set of teeth of the whitest sheen I have ever seen, as he held this lovely baby. A small moment of magic in a mighty Boeing jumbo jet, six miles high above the earth, alone in a clear blue sky, racing towards Europe as the world went about its business far below. Such is the stuff flight memories are made of.

Having consumed gallons of water, orange juice and wine I too felt the need to visit the splendidly clean toilets (SIA are superb at keeping them clean) and duly went to “Commune with Mother Nature.” Then I decided to exercise by walking round the entire passenger cabin, up one aisle all the way, cross over, and back down the other aisle. Round and round I went. Then I stood at the back and chatted some more. During this one of the delightful Singapore Airline stewardesses emerged from the crew rest area, gave me a dazzling smile and went up the aisle to the forward galley.

I chatted a bit more to various people, had another stroll and then returned to my seat. Almost immediately the stunning stewardess who had smiled at me came out of the galley, down the aisle and stopped by my side. Graciously lowering herself to a kneeling position, so her face was level with mine, she paused to speak. Naturally I hoped this was to be something special like, “Would you care for some champagne, sir?” or maybe even “The Captain wonders if you would care to join him on the flight deck?” Something of that ilk.

She smiled. She leaned forward confidentially, as if to impart some splendid information. Her deep black velvet eyes gazed into mine. She then spoke the words I shall take with me to the grave, “Do you know your zip is undone, Sir?”

I was mortified. I cast my blushing face and eyes downward and, horror of horrors, she was right. I had spent the best part of an hour talking and striding around the entire economy class cabin of a packed jumbo jet with my flies undone!

I don’t think I left my seat at all after that till we landed at Heathrow.

Thanks for reading if you’ve got this far and Merry Christmas to you if you have. I wish you a Happy New Year and one filled with good flying!