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.