SQ318 SIN-LHR in New Y (77WN), Terminal 2, The Shard, and Perfect Fish & Chips

[yflyer]

Today's menu...





Three main courses on offer on this flight...



...and light bites if you were hungry between lunch and the next meal, served before touch down...

[yflyer]

For my meal, I selected the beef pot roast, accompanied by a glass of red wine...today it was a French Cabernet Sauvignon...





They have recently changed the Y tableware...



On the downside, the glass is no longer glass. It is now plastic. I much preferred the previous glass cup.



The beef was ok, but not spectacular. Some might have found it a little bland even. Maybe one of the Asian/Oriental selections would have had more flavour, but I am always interested in how successful airlines are at serving beef in Y.

On the plus side, the portion of meat was very generous, and the vegetables and potatoes accompanying the meat tasted moist and fresh.



Dessert was a very tasty mango mouse cake.

[yflyer]

Some pictures of the cabin ambience after meal service, as pax were settling in to rest or explore the IFE.



The 9-abreast Y layout makes for a very roomy and comfortable cabin.



The folks in J were doing well too...a completely serene and tranquil J cabin...



No doubt, some had already started to fold out their flat beds...

[yflyer]

Meanwhile, in the rear of the plane, on this lightly loaded flight, I had also begun to prepare a flat bed of my own...

[yflyer]

This flight had inflight wifi internet connectivity...



This was a different system and provider from the OnAir system on other SQ aircraft (e.g. the A380)...I hope this system is introduced on other planes too, because it is a much better system, as it is not usage based (Billed based on Megabytes etc) but time based, which means you could sign up for unlimited access to internet for your whole flight at a fairly reasonable rate. A great system!



Unlimited wifi internet for the full 13 hour flight (transferable between devices, although only for one device at a time) for USD 21.95? I'll take it!



The login and sign-up process was quick, not all that different from signing up for a hotel or public wifi hotspot on land. Just have your credit card handy. I was online in minutes...





They also offered inflight SMS (Who uses SMS these days? WhatsApp or other internet based chat applications are so much better) on your phone, but thankfully no voice calls.

[yflyer]

I began exploring the IFE.

Overall, this is a very good system, which could potentially be great (More on this point later). In many ways, the system is a big improvement on the Krisworld on the A380, A330 and 77W. The video and audio quality are superb, and the touchscreen is a step up from any button/keypad based system.

Let's dive into the details...

Feature-wise, it is all there...



A great set of movies, television and music, plus games, news, airshow and other interactive capabilities.





I enjoyed many of the movies and TV programmes on offer.





Audio and video quality were both superb...





You could also rate movies at the end (Your ratings could be viewed by fellow passengers). Nifty feature, but I wonder how much of a sample size you would get since the ratings are reset for each flight, I believe.



There was a also a great audio selection...





And various interactive options, including games and educational content...

[yflyer]

The handheld controller could be used as a touchscreen to select content...



Or to display other content such as flight information...



So, overall, I found this to be a very capable, fully featured IFE system, at the leading edge of technology...

[yflyer]

Leading edge? Maybe bleeding edge...

I was surprised to find that, in a few small ways, the system was less usable and functional than the A380/A380/77W AVOD Krisworld.

There are a few quirks in the 77WN Krisworld, which if fixed, would make a good system great.

There are 3 minor quirks SQ should fix first:

First, navigating the basic UI : You can touch and you can swipe, however, there is nothing on the GUI to tell you that swiping up and down will take you to the different functions i.e. Movies, TV, Radio etc. If there were arrows or buttons on the screen to indicate up and down that the users could touch (or just to show that you could swipe up/down), this would have solved the issue, but it was about 1/3 of the way through the flight before I figured that out...maybe I'm slow but most other AVOD IFE systems I have used on other airlines, including the previous Krisworld, were more intuitive for basic navigation.

Second, the audio-on-demand has only a "jukebox" function to play selections through all the different CD's available. There is incredibly no way I could find to show a list of CD covers and pick the CD and tracks directly, like the previous Krisworld. The only way to do this was to go to the alphabetical index (by artist/album/genre) list of music to pick the album, before you had access to the full audio track listing.

Third, I could not find a way to switch from 16:9 aspect ratio to 4:3 aspect ratio when watching older TV programmes. This was a feature of the A380/A330/77W Krisworld, that has been inexplicably dropped here.

This is a pity, as there are many older, classic TV programmes on Krisworld, including "Whose Line is It Anyway?", "Monty Python" and "Mind Your Language", which should be shown in proper 4:3. If this is a feature hidden away in the bowels of the UI, someone please let me know how to access it.

To illustrate: this is the new 77WN Krisworld playing 4:3 content:



4:3 content is expanded to fit the 16:9 screen, which makes people look unnaturally fat...

On the A380/77W Krisworld (the screenshot below was taken on an A380 flight), the UI has a function to switch between 4:3 and 16:9, to display 4:3 format correctly.





They really need to restore this feature, so that older 4:3 content is displayed properly. Every Widescreen LCD/LED/Plasma TV on sale today has this feature for good reason: it is a mandatory capability, even if a segment of the general population has no idea what this phenomenon is...I for one cannot watch 4:3 content at all if displayed incorrectly.

So, three things SQ needs to do to fix these quirks in the 77WN Krisworld: 1) Basic UI Navigation needs to be simpler 2) Audio CD selection from a menu of available CD covers 3) Proper display of 4:3 TV content.

Am I being too picky? I don't think so. I've used the latest AVOD IFE systems on EK, CX, QF, BA, JL and MH, and the learning curve for the new 77WN Krisworld seems steeper than these other carriers' IFE offerings, which are all more intuitive and easier to use.

That said, to put things in perspective, I think the new Krisworld's core platform looks outstanding, and the issues look minor. They look more to me like the result of a rushed delivery schedule, and insufficient user testing and feedback, rather than any fundamental underlying problem. If they can fix that in the next release, they will have a top notch system. For the moment, I think it is a great system with a few teething issues.

[yflyer]

I got hungry mid-way through the flight. This would have been dinner time in Singapore, but the light meal service would only take place 2 hours before landing, which was hours away.

I headed to the galley for snacks...quite a few were available...



I ate a soft roll with tuna filling...



But that wasn't enough for dinner. I asked for cup noodles (not on the menu) and they had some onboard...

[yflyer]

I had previously flown to Europe mostly on overnight flights. On this occasion, with a daytime departure, there were great views over the Middle East and Central Asia enroute to the UK.

I spent a lot of time on this flight looking out the window...





Quite amazing geological features were to be seen from 10,000m...





Much of the flying was over Afghanistan and Iran...

[yflyer]

Enroute, we flew directly over Teheran Airport...





This is the main international airport in Iran.

Through the window, the IranAir Cargo letters painted on the red hangar roofs was clearly legible from cruising altitude...



The pictures above were captured by an iPhone 6+. Imagine if I had a proper camera with a telephoto lens with me...

[yflyer]

As we progressed over Central Asia, I began to notice more and more contrails of aircraft alongside us, in the distance. The Captain came on the PA at one point to mention as well that the airspace we were currently flying in was very busy...





Each cloudy streak in the picture represented one aircraft flying by...



Many of the other aircraft looked to be many tens (hundreds?) of kilometers away, however some flew by fairly close, either in the same direction, almost in close formation, or whizzing by in the opposite direction...

I was intrigued by the amount of traffic along these air routes...

[yflyer]

This is what the IFE Airshow had on display...



I was curious about the other aircraft around us.

I remembered that I had signed up for wifi internet on this flight, and went to flightradar24.com, an online live flight tracking website...

To my amazement, this is what the website showed...suddenly we were no longer alone in the sky...we were surrounded by other aircraft...the sky now resembled an expressway at rush hour...





The movement of planes was updated in near real time over the onboard wifi...

What was that streak out the window?



I clicked on the symbol onscreen...



It was UAE88 (i.e. EK88) enroute from Zurich to Dubai...



...it was fairly easy to see the correspondence between what I could see out the window, and what flightradar24.com was showing.

[yflyer]

2 hours before arrival, a light meal was served...



I chose the beef (again...)...



The starter was a seafood terrine...



The beef brisket was a delicious and very satisfying dish, with tender and juicy chunks of meat and very tasty accompaniments.



Dessert was strawberry brulee, which tasted a little powdery. I enjoyed the mango mousse served at lunchtime more than this dessert.

[yflyer]

It was time to descend into London...





On descent into Heathrow...



After a smooth landing, we taxied to Heathrow T2 - The Queen's Terminal, right next to an SQ A380 being readied for departure...