SQ308: Our Flight to London

A recent flight to London with Singapore Airlines was one of the best I have ever had in Economy Class. I’m not talking about the service—Singapore Airlines is always top notch, and they’ve been voted the “World’s Best Cabin Crew 2025” by Skytrax—it was how comfortable the flight was. I flew for just over 13 hours and arrived in very good physical condition, with no hint of the tiredness typically caused by a lack of sleep or stiffness.

The flight was my first ever to the UK and Europe from Singapore during daylight hours. This was something I would not have contemplated in the past, as I always flew during night hours to avoid long layovers and get to my destination as quickly as possible for a morning arrival.

I have flown overnight before and had three seats to myself to lie down and sleep. That was perfect too, leaving me reasonably refreshed. With some luck, I could have done the same this time, but I had my wife with me. Scoring two empty rows is much more difficult, especially on a route such as Singapore-London. The only alternative in Economy for both of us to arrive at our destination as refreshed as possible was a daylight flight. To do this, I looked up the flight schedule for London and found that Singapore Airlines had flight SQ308 flying during the daytime. Departure from Singapore Changi is at 09:00, with an arrival on the same day at 15:20 in London Heathrow. It sounded perfect.

There was one thing we had to do before that: align our flight from Adelaide to this one and book a hotel for the overnight stay. This meant we could have a (quasi) normal sleep the night before, which we spent in the Ambassador Transit Hotel in Terminal 3 at Singapore Changi Airport. This is a transit hotel I have stayed at many times before. The hotel, funnily enough, sat just above Gate B4, where our plane, an Airbus A380, was waiting.

On the day before flying out to London, we departed Adelaide (back in Australia) on SQ276 just before 19:00. The flight was scheduled to depart at 18:35, so we left a little late. We arrived at Changi a few minutes shy of 23:00—basically on time. I had booked the transit hotel for eight hours, which was enough time for a quick shower, seven hours of sleep, and breakfast at the hotel’s lounge. Breakfast was the one meal included with our stay.

The Airbus A380 also contributed to the comfortable flight. It’s so stable in the air and handles turbulence a little better than its twin-engined counterparts, the Airbus A350-900 and Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners. Don’t get me wrong, these two are great planes, but the A380 has a more rigid fuselage, and its bigger wings give it that extra stability. The seating comfort is slightly better thanks to an extra half inch (centimetre and a half) of width. The seat pitch is 32 inches. Perhaps the only drawback is the 3-4-3 seating configuration; two people are sandwiched instead of one like in a 3-3-3 layout. It is great for families of four, though.

This flight has given me food for thought; I’m now sold on the idea of flying to Europe during the day. My next trip to London will probably be on the same flight (in November 2026). The only other European destinations that have a daylight flight from Singapore are Frankfurt and Paris Charles de Gaulle. I’ll think about those in the future.

Cheers

Note: The Ambassador Transit Hotel is no longer managed by Harilela Hospitality. It is now managed by CTS Hospitality – Changi Transit Hotel.