It has previously been announced that SQ is receiving deliveries of 8 new 777-300ERs during 2013 and 2014, and that these birds will feature a new hard product, the details of which have not yet been announced (as far as I know - and Google suggests the same). See Singapore Airlines flags new seats and cabins from mid 2013 | Plane Talking, and other sources.
So, this evening I was using EF to run a few searches MEL-SIN and SIN-MEL on SQ metal. And I noticed something very interesting:
R class available on a 77W? What the??
Running more EF searches revealed consistent availability of R class on (77W-operated) SQ217 and SQ218 services from 01/07/2013 onwards (prior to 01/07/2013 77Ws are not used for this service - nor any of the other MEL-SIN or SIN-MEL services). Searching a bunch of other random 77W routes on a bunch of random dates later in the year didn't reveal any other 77W services offering R - which is not to say they're not out there (I only ran about 20 searches), but it does show the availability of R class on 77Ws isn't some sort of system-wide change SQ has made.
My first thought was that this was some sort of glitch, however I noticed something else strange when searching for award seats on the SQ website: whenever I ran a First/Suites search that returned one of the 77W-operated services where R class was available, the Saver level awards were listed as "Not Available" (but Standard and Full were). This clearly isn't normal for 77W services either.
Sooo... can we assume that from 01/07/2013 onwards, SQ217 and SQ218 are scheduled to be operated by brand-new 77Ws? And that the new, as-yet-unveiled hard product on these birds will include a Suites product up the pointy end? Or at least a "First" product which is sufficiently better than the current offering to justify being sold as "a class above First"? I think that, perhaps, the answer might be yes!
So, this evening I was using EF to run a few searches MEL-SIN and SIN-MEL on SQ metal. And I noticed something very interesting:
R class available on a 77W? What the??
Running more EF searches revealed consistent availability of R class on (77W-operated) SQ217 and SQ218 services from 01/07/2013 onwards (prior to 01/07/2013 77Ws are not used for this service - nor any of the other MEL-SIN or SIN-MEL services). Searching a bunch of other random 77W routes on a bunch of random dates later in the year didn't reveal any other 77W services offering R - which is not to say they're not out there (I only ran about 20 searches), but it does show the availability of R class on 77Ws isn't some sort of system-wide change SQ has made.
My first thought was that this was some sort of glitch, however I noticed something else strange when searching for award seats on the SQ website: whenever I ran a First/Suites search that returned one of the 77W-operated services where R class was available, the Saver level awards were listed as "Not Available" (but Standard and Full were). This clearly isn't normal for 77W services either.
Sooo... can we assume that from 01/07/2013 onwards, SQ217 and SQ218 are scheduled to be operated by brand-new 77Ws? And that the new, as-yet-unveiled hard product on these birds will include a Suites product up the pointy end? Or at least a "First" product which is sufficiently better than the current offering to justify being sold as "a class above First"? I think that, perhaps, the answer might be yes!
