Review of Singapore Airlines flight from Taipei to Singapore in Economy

(Warning : I did not spread smileys in the narrative. Second degree humor is a second nature with me)
This report begins back in late 2011, at the time when I was working in Taipei, and discovered that the office there would be closed for entire week for the soon to come Chinese New Year, unlike the previous year when we had an extended week-end. I realized that I could fly home to France, working in my office in Paris which had no reason to be closed and be with my relatives.
I could not claim business reasons for this trip, and since this was an extra trip on top of my company paid allowance, I would have to pay for it, and it would therefore be in Economy.
The problem was that 22 million Taiwanese had realized before me that they too would have a full week of vacation, and that most flights in and out of Taipei were already booked solid. Even when adding a few days off before and after, I could not afford to be choosy. Using FB airmiles ? I tried on the net and kept stumbling on the failure on the (then?) notoriously unreliable FB website.

That did not worry much, because my experience at that time was that it was impossible to book FB award tickets on the net, at least not at my dates and destinations. Calling the hotline did work, but the only availabilities on KLM were at Flex rate: 160,000 airmiles for TPE-BKK-AMS-CDG and back in Economy, when I could do it in Business at a fixed date another time? There had to be a better deal.
The Taiwanese travel agency in front of my office found me a round trip which was 15% cheaper than the public rate on KLM (a well known airline with a well established reputation), and like any travel newbie, I first bought the cheapest ticket, on an exotic unproven airline, and then checked on Flight Report if it had been a good idea. Quite frankly, it was a plain disaster :
- Five hours connecting time in Singapore : wasn’t it tight ?
- Who would trust Singapore Airlines, based in a micro-state created out in a backwater harbor in 1965, at a time when a top standard airline like KLM had already been operating for half a century?
- There had been only a single Flight Report in Economy on that airline at the time, which was ample proof that no seasoned traveler would be caught dead flying it. When you insist in flying to CDG, an airport which repeatedly makes the Top 10 Worst Airports list, you cannot expect to fly on the best airlines.
- Last not least, the flights to/from CDG were going to be operated with an A380-800. There were only 63 of them in operation in the world at that time, ample proof of the defiance of the airlines towards this UFO, compared to the 1,418 747s, the favorite aircraft of the most honorable airlines serving Taipei, like KLM, China Airlines and Eva Air. (If you know nothing about aircraft and do not try to elevate yourself from that status, the silhouette of an A380 is roughly like that of an A319, only bigger).
- Contrary to the B747, there has never been an A380-100, 200, etc. which seemed to prove that this plane manufacturer had fumbled a lot before eventually producing a plane which could take off.
It was too late to whine: my ticket was not very reimbursable, not very modifiable, not very exchangeable, in short not very tolerant to the anguish of a migrant worker saving every Taiwanese dollar of his hard currency paycheck to send most of it home through Western Union to support his family left behind in its undeveloped home country laid waste by the economic crisis.
When you travel in Economy and economize, you have to assume your choice. This FR is the first segment of a trip the hard way to Old Europe:
TPE – SIN (SQ877, A330-300) YOU ARE HERE
SIN - CDG (SQ 334) A380-800
CDG - SIN (SQ 333) A380-800
SIN - TPE (SQ 378) A330-300
Now that this longish introduction is over, this report starts simply at Taipei’s Main station – with buses on the left and trains on the right. These are not pretty buildings, but they are very functional.

As soon as I had bought a ticket for the airport, I only needed to place my suitcases in the hold (separate ones for Terminals 1 and 2) and board the bus which was departing immediately.

The seats and the seat pitch were comfortable, but don’t be fooled by the IFE screens : they were not in operation on that line.

The bus first crossed the Danshui river to make a stop in an outlying neighborhood, which wasted ten minutes, before reaching the expressway. My frequent readers know that the mountains in the background are Yangmingshan National Park.

The subway line was supposed to open one year later, i.e. in 2013, but it did not require much civil works experience to guess that they would not meet this target: the deck had been built on only half of the viaducts’ length. As of posting this report in early 2016, the line has not opened yet. Have you ever heard of a new rail line in Taiwan which opened on time ?

The bus first served Terminal 1, the one furthest away, and backtracked afterwards to Terminal 2. Terminal 1, below was then undergoing a massive renovation work.

This is Terminal 2 landside.

I wanted a window seat on the correct side and had registered on line at ETD-48h + a few minutes, but there was already not that much choice. Anyway, I only needed to drop my suitcase which was a few grams short of 20 kilos. My hand luggage was just within regulatory dimensions and well above the 7 kg limit recalled on the BP, but I could manage to “wear the excess weight” if needed, but this did not happen.

A China Airlines crew, and the hall’s decoration overhead.

A landside shop ; note the nursing room which is very common in public facilities in Taiwan.

I checked the toilets which were clean, but showing wear and age. This one was the wheelchair accessible one; there were traces of where the partition wall was before the toilet was widened to make it accessible. (The Taiwanese are very keen on wheelchair accessibility, nowadays).

There were luxury shops immediately after the immigration control which was very fast, because there was no waiting line.

If you feel unwell after the immigration control, maybe for some unmentionable reason, there is an infirmary just left.

This is not a children playground, but the shop decoration using a typical Taiwanese Taoist float design.

A recall of the iconic Taipei 101 Tower, all the more visible in Taipei that there is no other very tall building. It was the tallest building in the world between 2004 and 2010.

I disapprove using this room which is open to the outside.

There is it again : it is the smoking area.

Checking in must be done at the correct terminal, but both terminals are actually two opposite sides of a square, and you can walk all the way around airside. There are boarding gates on three sides, and the fourth one is a corridor above parking lots, with a people mover if do not want to walk :

Free Internet access stations, not the one on the left at child height, or more probably at wheelchair height - the Taiwanese are very serious about disabled person accessibility in Taipei.

For once, I did not leave Flight Report’s home page on an internet access computer screen.

A tea shop – Taiwan produces a lot of it, more in the upper quality ranges.

Part of this children play ground was closed for an ill-defined maintenance, but it was empty anyway. Note though the small tables in the foreground, with Lego Duplo building blocks. Who would steal toys in Taiwan?

This is nowhere to be found in Mainland China’s airports : a prayer room. This one was Christian, but there were others for other religions (Buddhist and Muslim, if my memory is correct). You see here one of the four benches, and there were two Bibles – one in English, the other in Chinese on what could be used as a an altar.

Now the various boarding gates in TPE’s D side. I would not indulge in any tourist promotion of Taiwan, and only show you the airport.
This one of course represents the Alishan narrow gauge railway which climbs some 2,300 m up from Chiayi , around 70 m above sea level.

The benches were inspired from those of an Aboriginal tribe, which unfortunately made them quite uncomfortable.

Also immediately recognizable, this canoe of the Yami tribe which lives in Lanyu (« Orchid ») Island, south east of Taiwan.

This is a real children play area.

Gate D7, that for my flight, was promoting the Pili puppets, which constitute a surprizing evolution of an ancestral art towarts heroic fantasy aesthetics.

Were there any planes in this airport. Yes of course, and your modem will suffer from your insistence. This one is not local, despite its claims : an Air China A340.

That Air China A340 nevertheless did not belong there, because D side plane spotting was inevitably mostly Skyteam. The locally leading airline in that alliance is of course CI, with a 747 in its then brand new Skyteam livery, in front of a taking off JAL aircraft.

There she was at her parking spot.

It would have been unthinkable 15 years earlier to see a Chinese aircraft here, and belonging to the same alliance as a Taiwanese airline. A China Southern A321.

And a Shanghai Airlines 738

China Airlines, the Taiwanese flag carrier, had the lion’s share here. Its competitor Eva Air, which belongs to the private Evergreen group, is at the other terminal. Some sunshine improved my pictures there.

A Vietnam Airlines A321, Skyteam again.

Take off of a Jetstar aircraft, with an Eva Air cargo plane in the background.

The incoming SQ 333 is another exception in this Taiwanese landscape.

Her crew was leaving the cafe where they had taken seats waiting for her.

There was an impressive ballet of containers.

The aircraft was going to be full above and below deck.

The boarding room was downstairs, because they are bi-level in TPE : at concourse level , and downstairs after a BP check. There was no shop there, since the passengers were not supposed to wait there for more than 20 minutes. This was similar in principle to a LCC’s pre-boarding, only that there were seats for all.

The toilets were not luxurious, but they were clean.

There were also power ports for feeding your favorite electronic toy.

Front view of the SQ 333.

The Air China A340 parked at the next gate. This aircraft is supposed to be a very long range, but this one will operate a flight to Mainland China, at most three hours away.

This was going to be my universe during this 4h20’ flight : a commendable seat pitch and an IFE screen of obvious upscale size for an economy seat (10.4”).

The cabin shortly before the door was closed.

Winglet and tail

Another view of the seat pitch

Pushback was on time. Remind me of China Airlines’ emblem ?

An intruder slipped into the row of planes there : a Shandong Airlines738, probably operating a flight to/from Jinan, the capital of that Chinese province.

A China Airlines 747.

The ground staff salutes as always the people on board. 再見,台北 ! Zaijian, Taibei ! (Bye bye, Taipei !)

This is a fake control tower : it belongs to the Aviation Museum which is there. It provides a rather poor plane spotting viewpoint, because it is too far way from the terminals and the runways.

This aircraft will never take off again – see the tail, and the reactors are actually fake : it is the emergency services training ground. It could be seen for a couple seconds from the bus leaving the airport. They invested in a newer aircraft a few years later - this one was an A300-600, in case you wonder.

Takeoff after this JAL 738

I wanted a window on the left because the air route would be following Taiwan’s mountain range, which spans all the 400 km length from the north end to the south end of the island. These are very impassable mountains : there are only three (very winding) east-west roads. It was winter, but there was no trace of snow, unusually so.

I did not memorize that geography enough to identify the summits, and I eliminated many of my pictures of that landscape which unrolled for nearly half an hour.

The small Chiayi airport, which is also an air force base.

Ideally, a FR should have an air-to-air picture. This is a China Airlines 744 heading towards Taipei.
(Ideally too, the picture should be a lot better than that…)

Two in one, with boththe SQ winglet and the CI 744.

Taiwan felt like home at that time, and that was where I was really leaving home : the harbor of Kaohsiung was the last view of Taiwan I would have until the return flight ten days later.

The aircraft turned towards Singapore after leaving Taiwan.

It was high time to have lunch and this was the menu. I forgot to mention the distribution of a warm oshibori, of a welcome drink (water, apple or orange juice, sparkling wine) and of a salted nuts mix.

My readers know that I do not drink alcohol and I won’t comment the offering in this regard.

IFE and the initial draft of this FR.

This was of my (Asian) choice. The starters were delicious; the hot meal rather nondescript. The tea served with the meal was good, but not exceptional. A coffee was served at the end of the meal.

This was the other choice, selected by my neighbor, a Filipino based in Singapore who had been in Taipei for business. He wished he could have gone from there to Manila, only two hours from Taipei, but all the flights were full due to the Chinese New Year.

This Häagen Dasz ice cream was initially very cold, but waiting for a few minutes was enough to start eating it.

The view outside again, with these curious endless rows of clouds.

The left side of the economy cabin

And the right side, with the dealignment of the seats due to the narrowing of the fuselage in the rear.

A Singapore Girl in action.

The audio and video offering was enormous, with good quality 10.4" screen. I usually don’t use much the IFE for other than the airshow, but this time I listen to Cecilia Bartoldi – I could not waste a chance to listen again the solo in the first movement of Mozart’s Solemn Vespers of a Confessor.

Not only does the immigration form remind travelers that Singapore applies an unfriendly death penalty to equally unfriendly drug traffickers, but the purser reminded it too in her pre-landing announcement.

There are so many ships anchored off Singapore that you cannot see the horizon from the shore.

Landing at sunset

An onion peel view of a reactor undergoing maintenance.

The Singapore immigration counters, where the immigration waiting time was negligible. The automatic gates for Singporeans, foreign residents and frequent visitors are on the left.

How about going downtown ? It was 7 :30 pm, and my connecting flight was at 23 :55, but the staff at the tourist office talked me out of going there by subway: too far, I had to be back at ETD-2h, and I should take a taxi, for 25-30 SGD each way. The leaflet received at check-in mandated that SQ passengers be thre at ETD-90’ if without checked lugagge, or ETD-2h30’ if they had to check luggage. It is not very difficult to be on time when you make the customers wait for you !

I decided it was not worth the expense (history showed that I would have opportunities to visit Singapore at length a few years later), and I decided to take the subway to simply go a few stops away and get some fresh air. (Fresh did not mean cool, of course)

Quite frankly, Tampines at night was nothing fascinating, and after having a bite in a food court, I rather quickly headed back to the airport.

What followed belongs to the report of the connecting flight to CDG.