Going Home: Los Angeles - Tokyo on the Spacebed in May

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Booking
Once again a trans-pacific crossing on Business Class thanks to the wonder of miles. This time around, I flew SIN-LAX-YVR on another one way mileage ticket, and initially I had my return for the 28th, however I found some award availability for YVR-LAX-SIN in April 29th and SIN-ICN-YVR on January which were fixed dates for me. A quick call, or what seems quick but takes about an hour, had those seats booked. I was in a hurry to ticket the flights as at that time the LAX-SIN sector was to be flown by the Airbus 380 in Business Class which for the day was a very attractive proposition.

Plane Changes
As the Japan Earthquake struck, the Airbus 380 was pulled out of that flight, however the other flights available that time mainly the Vancouver – Shanghai – Singapore flight was no longer available, so I had to settle with the six hour layover in LAX and traveling on the 77W, something which I don’t mind but not worth the trouble for to travel all the way to LAX. I kept on checking for availability to change it, and I actually was just looking through the seatmap on expertflyer once when I found out my plane had changed to the 747-400 only for that flight. I got even more excited, and immediately changed my seat to 17K which was available at that time, one of the best J seats on the SQ 744. I looked at it closely, and found irregularities often as SingaporeAir.com would always mention it’s a Boeing 777-300ER, and occasionally the flight wasn’t even listed on expertflyer.com. That got me slightly worried, however eventually an email was sent advising of the plane change, just as I was going to change my flight as availability just opened up. With the email I was quite content that SQ won’t be changing my plane much further.

Getting to Los Angeles
The time came, and after a morning arrival from Vancouver on Air Canada 550, I went straight to the TBIT and through security. At security, the staff did say that Air Canada doesn’t fly from here and you have to go to the AC terminal, which I do believe was terminal 3 but never actually got that confirmed. I had to advise her that in fact my flight was on Singapore Airlines, and after verifying my boarding pass more carefully she let me go.
Security lines were very short in general, with no one in front of me, which made sense as it was too early for flights to Europe and Asia, the two biggest places I thought flights would be going to from this terminal.
Lounge

I headed straight to the star alliance lounge, and checked out the lounge walking through its entirety to choose where to sit. On first impressions the lounge was actually very good, certainly better than some of the other lounges I have experienced, and found a nice place which had 4 seats all to myself throughout the visit. I was advised during the lounge that a Singapore Airlines agent will come looking for you to finish off the checking-in process, which I came to interpret as just giving me my new Singapore Airlines boarding pass.

I went for some snacks, and over the period of about five hours and thirty minutes I had about two sandwiches, some nuts, a lot of water and some nachos (doritos) if I remember correctly. Throughout the time I spent surfing the internet, catching up on the recent airline and general news as I had been very busy for the past month or so from university. I also made a few final calls in Vancouver just to say that I was going now and wouldn’t be back for another four months.

During this time of course I heard my name being called by a passing by agent and was surprised how she managed to identify me. She said I walked through the entire lounge trying to identify who it could be and then I thought it was you. She asked me for my bag tags, old boarding pass, visa and a frequent flyer number. The bag tags and boarding pass were easy, as she immediately replaced the boarding pass. I gave her my frequent flyer number, but couldn’t find my visa. She waited for about five minutes whilst I checked every paper, and I found all my old Singapore visas, just not the latest. I told her I’d show it to her on my laptop, then I’d print it out for arrival in Singapore which she was content with.

As the time approached to leave the lounge, I thought I’d get to the gate early and request for a seat where there wasn’t anyone sitting as by this time you would hope that everyone has checked in. I found an agent in the lounge and asked her if there were any pairs of seats empty in the upper deck to which she replied 17C remains empty till Tokyo. Being content with that she also advised that she is going to announce boarding now and you may want to proceed to the gate.

As I walked to the gate, boarding hadn’t commenced yet even though it was obvious we were all called from the lounge. The security officer whispered something to the gate agent, and very quickly as they were pre-boarding wheelchair passengers we were asked to board as well without a formal boarding announcement. As I approached the aircraft, there was this weird feeling, once again sitting on the upper deck of the Boeing 747, and this time I’d be going home rather than University which I did on the way out. I boarded, turned right and went straight up the stairs to take my seat after putting all my belongings in the overhead bin but keeping my digital camera with me on the side storage.

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Flight
As the crews were doing their work, I quickly asked them if they had loaded my Indian Vegetarian Meal today, and the crew thought about it for a second then she verified my name as I must have been the only Indian Vegetarian meal in Business class today, and then mentioned she has and has also checked to ensure that the everything is there as well. People travel SQ for consistency, and although I haven’t had too many flights on the ground, but we all know that one trolley will come around with crew asking the choice of reading materials, a tray coming around for a pre-departure drink and I do believe another tray coming around with hot towels. During this time, your post-departure drink is also asked. Those towels are always a pleasure to receive especially when traveling.

As we left the gate, the safety video was being played, and the cabin crew took out my screen so I could see the video, and also had a pull down old-school projector style safety video being displayed. Once the safety briefing was over, another crew member came to me and ensured that I had understood the safety video. He also briefed me how to open the door in an emergency setting and advised that I may be asked to open the door in case of an emergency. He continued to mention that as the seat next to you will be empty for the duration of the flight, he will be seated there for take-off and landing so everyone is seated in the emergency exit seats. Interesting, but very good idea I must say, I was on a JetStar flight and was wondering if it’s illegal to have the entire 4 rows of emergency exit seats empty for the flight.

Anyways I was really glad to be finally on my way home after three months, and during the climb and landing phase, the cabin crew member was very open in the way he communicated, being open to his experiences as a cabin crew member, and how he managed to become a crew member on Singapore Airlines. As soon as the seatbelt sign went off, the cabin crew as usual got into action, with one of them coming by me to open my IFE system, even before I could manage to do it myself. First came out the post-departure drink which was water for me alongside with a bowl of nuts. These bowl of nuts are the packet nuts served in economy class on most of my SQ flights, except they are served in a bowl. The nuts although they were horrible, they were good enough as I was extremely hungry by then.

I checked the IFE guide, knowing somewhat the movies offered on todays flights. Although I don’t watch movies onboard, I always start it, but end up watching the airshow for pretty much the entire flight, however as today I had two screens, my second screen was set up for me to see the airshow for the entire flight, however there were on plenty of occasions the cabin crew came by and closed the screen for me. They did this to help me sleep as the light was coming directly on my face, but once they tried to do it whilst I was awake, and quickly told them that don’t close the screen as I like to know where I am immediately after waking up from my partial naps.
Anyways, the meal service finally started

Appetiser


Main Meal




Dessert

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As the meal service was over, I continued to watch the movie Band Baajaa Baarat (Hindi) until I got bored of it, reclined my seat to the fully flat position and dozed off. I woke up intermittently, but not really a problem as the seat was still amazing to sleep on. Once again I find that unlike other people, I can sleep surprisingly well on these lie-flat seats, certainly better than the fully flat seats on United and Air Canada.

As we were about two hours out of Tokyo, the second meal service once again started.

If you didn't note I was trying to capture the aspect that our flight was "drifting"

Appetiser


Main Meal


Dessert, most obviously not a light meal for me. No space for the dessert on the tray and not served otherwise for other passengers!

One thing to note is that unlike the meal service it was supposed to be, a light meal it was actually a full dinner service for me, and when the crew give out hot towels after meals, I was the only one finishing my meal because the light meal was really a light meal for everyone else onboard. I also noticed that on both the SFO-HKG and LAX-NRT sector, SQ likes giving out raisins, and they always leave it there when taking the meal away thinking I’ll eat it later, but none the less that never happens. Also, during this meal service I finally deviated myself from the water and ordered a mocktail, which the cabin crew were delighted to hear, as they were surprised with my lack of alcohol/other drinks intake onboard this flight.

With the meal service over, we finally started our descent into Tokyo with once again one cabin crew member taking the seat beside me as it was empty. It was a quick taxi, and I went straight to the lounge to freshen up for my final sector before reaching home.

A photo from the NRT-SIN flight. I moved to that seat because someone was sitting in 17C