* Warning, this is likely to be long and has a number of unusual and out of character delays for Singapore Airlines *
Edited - Forgot this bit - There were at least 21 empty seats in J in the secondary cabin.
I had returned from Toronto on Thursday lunchtime in order to get this flight, so was very happy to find it was still on schedule.
I checked in online the previous day, and arrived at the airport at 9:30am for the 11:55am flight. I eventually found my passport when I was at the desk
, Economy lines were long, there was no one else in the Business or Suites lines.Collected my Dollars, and went to the Fast Track, which was n't fast, and the regular lines were going better. I skipped all the shops and went straight to the lounge. The receptionist advised that there would be an hours delay, as the plane was at LHR, but had a technical problem. Given all the delays and cancellations I had experiences recently with Air Canada, I thought an hour would be manageable.
At around 11am they made another announcement, that the flight would be delayed another 2 hours, as the engineers were working on a fuel leak. After 45 minutes, they updated us to say they have no idea when we would be going, then another 45 minutes later, they decided to cancel the flight, and we were told they would re-book us onto the next available flights, as there were 2 more that day.
I went to the reception team, to see what the options were, and it was either Economy in a 747 or Business on the A380 the next day. As I needed to start a Troubleshooting class on Monday morning.
I opted for Economy, in order to get the job done, as I could n't expect my team to make changes to their plans. Although it would mess up my Tier Point planning for this year.
Then another 45 minutes, they said they had fixed it, and we would be leaving shortly. Which would have been just gone 4pm, so 4 hours late.
This is when the announcements stopped, and we did n't hear anything at all, so around 5pm I headed to the front desk to ask, and was told around 6pm would be the likely time.
In the meantime, I had been watching my TV at home all day, through my Slingplayer which was a godsend. Speaking to some of the passengers in the lounge, some say they had been waiting 9 days for the flight due to the air space closure.
The time ticked away, and at around 7pm we were called to the gate, as boarding was just starting. It did n't long to get on board and settle into the seat, and start to experience again the great on board hospitality.
We eventually pushed back at 19:55 and were wheels up at 20:30, which was 8 hours late. I expect the additional delay was due to the original crew being out of hours. My guess is that as there are 2 A380 flights a day, they might have stood the first crew down, and brought the second crew on 2 hours earlier.
We were told that the flight time was going to be 12 hours and 10 minutes, and expected in around 15:20.
The crew always call you by your name, and the service was excellent as people describe the experience. The food choice was a Greek and Shrimp Salad, a Chicken, Veg and prune puree and Strawberry ice cream.
The food was very good indeed, probably the tastiest and best presented food I have ever had in the air. The cabin crew pass through so often, that they clear up immediately, which I really like. It means I can settle down to sleep when I want, not when my tray is cleared.
I was watching Sherlock Holmes, which is what I had planned to watch on Thursday night, when AC had an IFE problem and rebooted the system.
I enjoyed the film, and settled down to make my bed, and struggled, because the seat has to be back in it's landing position before the lever to flip the bed will work.
I got some help, and settled down to sleep, with the seat belt on, as they had predicted some turbulence. What was quite frustrating, was every time they put the seat belt signs on, they made an announcement, which did disturb me a little at least 3 times. I do like Virgin's, this is the only announcement we will make, as it's bed time people.
The bed is also similar to Virgin's, rock hard and uncomfortable, so my sleep was n't that good, but I do think I had 7 hours lying down, and only disturbed by the announcements and someone else snoring. I'm using ear plugs on the return trip.
Breakfast was fresh fruit, pastry, yoghurt and juice, again, all quality and well presented.
Just after breakfast I decided to have a look at the rear of the aircraft, and it did n't look too bad for economy, with some good exit row seats although after an 8 hour delay in T3 and a 12 hour flight, I was glad I had a seat where I did.
We landed at 15:15, and Immigration was empty, so straight through. My last experience with BA 2 years ago had me in a huge mass queue for quite a while.
The bags started coming off at 15:30, and were all crew bags. By 16:00 we were getting concerned about where our bags were, I had a suspicion that because some of us had decided to re-book, the bags may be on another flight etc.
One of the other J passengers went off to check what was going on, and we got a message back that there had been some mix up, and that a luggage bin had gone off to the transfers area.
They made an announcement after we had complained, stating that there was some problems offloading the luggage.
A few more bags dribbled out, and by 16:15 no new bags were coming out. So most of us headed over to the luggage desk to start filling out lost luggage forms.
While we were filling them out, some new bags came out, and most of us were relocated with out bags.
It was now 16:30, an hour after the first bags had come off, and we were now at the Taxi rank, which hardly had any Taxis, but a huge amount of people waiting. I need to find a better way, as the queue took 20 mins to get me to the front, and my Taxi driver showed me the many taxis outside the airport, waiting for 5pm to come, so they can charge an extra $2.
So, I arrived at the Marriott, at 5.30pm, which was exactly 24 hours after I started the journey from Heathrow.
The delays could have been handled better by the LHR ground crew, with some better and more appropriate updates once the flight was back on, and the luggage handling at the end was n't a good ending to the story. The flight bit in the middle was good.
It's 21:15 now, and I have a few more things to do before I turn in for the night.
