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It’s Friday, so let’s just forget about reality and move into the world of the super rich and famous. The hot trend these days? Private suites doubling as First Class. Emirates, Qantas, and Singapore are all entering the ring as are others, and it’s just ridiculously awesome, to say the least.

Now I didn’t get the chance to see Emirates’ stuff because I ran out of time. Since I’ll be on their A380 demo flight next week, I figured I could put them last. I did, however, get to see Qantas and Singapore show off their stuff. Which one wins? Well, they both do. Singapore has fantastic privacy while Qantas has some pretty cool uses of space. I’d be happy to take either one on my next trip.

Let’s start with Qantas, since that’s the one I saw first. These suites will be going into the A380 aircraft that begin flying for the airline soon. When you enter the suite, you can see that it appears to be open on the far side. This will usually be the side of the aircraft, but if you’re in the one in the middle, it may still be open to the aisle. I didn’t get clarification on that.

From the picture at left, you can see the floorspace to the left of the center of the seat. That’s where your TV is, and it’s where your tray table rolls out as well as your bed. The seat turns left and goes flat that way to avoid taking up so much room on the plane.

At right, you see the friendly flight attendant presenter sitting at what would be the foot end of your bed. When you’re not laying down, that becomes a seat and the tray table rolls out in between you so you can share a meal. It’s quite nice. That metal thing at the right of the picture? That’s your TV screen folded up.

The coolest part of this? The remote control. Check out this bad boy at left. It’s actually pretty heavy, but it’s impressive what it can do. Watch videos, listen to music, turn on your massager, dim your lighting, and electronically shade your windows if you’d like. It’s so cool. Hopefully it doesn’t break with so much complexity.

Now let’s talk about Singapore. They’ve gone for a different style of suite. The view at right is from the door. You look right and you see the very plush seat. If you looked left, you’d see the TV. Straight ahead of you is where the tray table rolls out. There is no angle here at all.

The bed is completely separate from the seat here. In fact, it took a couple minutes to set up and it’s a fairly complex procedure. Since this is Singapore, the flight attendants do it for you, and will of course be at your beck and call. The bed itself lies in the wall behind the seat. The seat folds down and the bed unfolds over it. You can see this (sort of) at left. You can also see that the attention to detail is phenomenal. They’ve even put a place for you to hang your headphones when you’re in bed. All of the suites here (and on Qantas, for that matter) have multiple locations for entertainment controls so that regardless of your position, the controls are always within reach.

This last shot (at right) shows me sitting down with spokesperson James Boyd. He is where my feet would lie in flat bed position. And you can see the screen behind his head. The table was very big and seemingly sturdy. It was a very comfortable place to be.

Though the walls of the suite don’t go all the way up, you have plenty of privacy here. There are shades over two open air holes looking to the aisle, and when you pull them down, only the bottom is see-through. This is, of course, for flight attendants to perform their duties.

As you can see, these are incredible and ridiculous all at the same time. It’s amazing to think how quickly First Class has gone upmarket. As long as there is enough demand for these seats, we can expect to continue to see more and more innovation in this area. Though I may not have the chance to fly it, it’s still fun to drool over.

Regular readers of the blog know that I’m not a fan of all these “Best of” surveys. That’s why I haven’t written about JD Power’s boring surveys or anything else like that. But, when a survey has an interesting angle, it certainly catches my eye. This includes a recent British survey showing Palmair as one of the top four airlines in the world. Who?

This year’s Which? Awards (out of the UK) features “the best companies and individuals that seek to serve the interests of consumers.” In the airline category, it’s not surprising to see Air New Zealand, Jet Airways, and Singapore Airlines (the eventual winner) make the list of finalists. But that fourth finalist? Palmair. They ended up tying with Air New Zealand for third place.

I must admit that I’ve never heard of these guys, so I thought I’d dig in a little more. The airline seems like an unlikely hero. Based in Bournemouth, on the Southern coast of England, Palmair has a single 737-200 chartered from European Air Charter. The airplane started life with Sabena nearly 35 years ago, but it’s still going strong.

The airline exists to appear solely as a way to funnel pasty white Brits down to warm and sunny places to try to get a little color. You can’t book online, and it’s recommended that you use a travel agent or call them directly. You get a hot meal, but you won’t get your seat assignment until you arrive at the airport. You can only bring 20 kilos of baggage with you as well. So what is so great about these guys?

There aren’t any reviews on SkyTrax to help us out, but there have been plenty of articles popping up since the airline made it on the list. One from the Telegraph shows that flying with a focus on personal service has really set them apart. Just a sampling of what they do well.

• “Singapore Airlines has 100 planes including the A380 which is the largest plane in service, on-board massages and a choice of dvds. All we can offer is the choice of tea or coffee . . .”
• Until 2006, [founder Peter] Bath made sure he was in the departure lounge for each flight to greet the passengers. He then stood on the Tarmac at Bournemouth Airport in Dorset where the airline is based and waved off every single flight.”
• When Mr Bath passed away, long-standing airport representative Teresia Rossello took over the role. She also ensures each customer can have their choice of seat by drawing out a plan in her kitchen every night.
• Stewardesses place fresh flowers on the plane, including the toilets, every day and the company has removed a row of seats to give customers more room.

Sounds nice, right? I’m sure it is, but it’s easy to do with only one airplane. Good luck finding anyone who can replicate this on a large scale. It really makes you wonder how this tiny airline made it on to such a big list. Apparently, there were 70,000 votes by the general public to pick the winner. Sounds like there was a heck of a write-in campaign on behalf of this airline. It seems that every person who has heard of the airline must have felt compelled to go and vote.

So this doesn’t really change my view of surveys. I don’t find this particularly useful at all, since I highly doubt I’ll ever be in Bournemouth, and if I am, I’m unlikely to be flying to a sun spot. This may be an excellent airline, but if it doesn’t fly anywhere you need to be, is it really helpful? In fact, I’d imagine most people would find this news completely worthless, but I imagine all of us would enjoy flying on an airline like this, if it existed in our own backyard.

I was going to follow up yesterday’s post with some more detailed notes from the US Airways Media Day, but then I figured you guys are probably sick of hearing about it. Maybe I’ll post it in the next couple of days.

Instead, let’s talk about the unenviable position Singapore Air is in. The airline announced today what had been rumored for some time. The five A340-500 aircraft that fly the ultra long haul LAX and Newark to Singapore routes will be converted to all-business class flying.

Sounds good, right? So why is it an “unenviable position”? Those planes have not exactly been the shining stars for the airline. Originally, that plane was expected to have greater range than it ended up having. Now, it can’t even make those routes nonstop with a full load. That’s why the airline has only 181 seats onboard with a mix of the old business class Spacebed and “Executive Economy” onboard right now.

I’m guessing they didn’t put First class on because the seats weighed too much. And though they’ll tell you that they put Executive Economy with more legroom onboard because the flight is so long and they wanted to offer a better experience, methinks the truth is that they just can’t put on any more seats and still make the flight nonstop. This plane is pushing it.

So, with fuel prices where they are, these flights must be absolute dogs. They can get a small premium for Exec Economy, but not enough to make up for the fact that there are only 181 seats on that dog of a plane. And they can’t get much in the way of a business class premium because they have the sub-par Spacebed on board instead of the amazing new business class product that they’re putting on the rest of the fleet.

Solution? Kill the Economy seats, put on 100 of the new business class seats, and hope you can charge like crazy for the privilege of sitting there.

Admittedly, this’ll be one heck of an experience to fly. Will it make money? Maybe. They can probably get away with jacking up fares significantly, but with only 100 seats onboard, that’s still going to be a stretch. My guess is that they still just don’t know what to do with those planes since they’ve never lived up to expectations.

Starting in mid-May, Newark will start getting the new interiors, and the transition will be done by the end of June. LAX will have the new configuration by late September. And if you’re booked on this plane in Exec Economy, they’ll rebook you on a one-stop flight. Now there’s a bummer. You’ll be back in regular economy and you have to add a stop.

Last week, both Singapore and Aloha came out with some cool looking new planes. First up, let’s take a look at Singapore’s first A380 to come out of the paint shop. I definitely don’t think they got its best side. That cro-magnon looking forehead is definitely exaggerated even further with all that white space. (Taken from Singapore website. Photo credit: Airbus - C. Brinkmann)

Next up we have Aloha’s Wyland-painted 737. Yup, they say it was hand-painted by Wyland, but I don’t know if you can actually hand paint and airplane without affecting drag. Anyway, you might recognize the name - he’s famous for painting huge marine life murals primarily in the US but also all over the world. I found this one on the HNL RareBirds blog, a great place for airplane porn in the Hawaiian Islands.

It’s always fun to watch these games of one-upmanship among the world’s elite airlines.

You may remember this post on Cathay’s new products. It was their new coach class that really caught my eye, but it’s the opposite end of the spectrum that grabbed me with Singapore’s latest announcement.

First of all, check out their new First Class. Actually, before I get into it, just look at this photo taken from their website:

I’m guessing your reaction was the same as mine . . . holy f’in crap! Look at that spread.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the 23″ LCD screen. That thing has full audio/video on demand, video games, and a full business software system. That means you can create documents, spreadsheets or presentations without bringing your own computer. (Ok, I’m not sure why you’d need that. If you did, you’d have your own computer, but whatever.)

Let’s talk more about the seat. It’s 35″ across giving you only 4″ less than a twin bed. For an airplane seat, that’s incredible, at least 7 or 8″ more than the next best out there and probably 14″ more than most. And of course, it turns into a flat bed. And how about this turndown service:

Ok, so that is first class and most of us won’t get to experience it. How about something more reasonable? Yup, even Business Class (apparently no longer called Raffles Class) is incredible. Here is Exhibit A:

It doesn’t even look real. I keep thinking that’s a normal-sized seat with a midget sitting in it, but in reality, it’s huge. This one is 30″ wide, still an impressive size. And it goes fully flat as well. This one only has a 15.4″ screen, but, um, that’s still pretty good.

The big question that comes to my mind is . . . how can they afford to do this? They say they’ll have only four seats across on a 777 in business class. Right now, they have 7 across, as do most airlines in business. That means a lot fewer seats need to make a lot more revenue per seat to make up for the difference. I’m sure Singapore thought about this and ran plenty of models, so it’s a safe bet that fares are going to go up and they don’t think they’ll have trouble making up the difference. Since premium cabin fares have been lower on the Pacific than on the Atlantic in upper cabins anyway, this isn’t a stretch.

Now, coach is also being redone, but there’s nothing special there. That means there is a huge gulf between coach and business. You would think this would create an opening for them to make a fourth “Premium Economy” cabin, but they haven’t done that yet on these planes.

They say these new cabins go into service in December on the Singapore - Paris/Switzerland routes and then it will continue rolling out from there.