When I could no longer fight my body’s hunger signals, I stopped pretending to be asleep. Getting served a meal when you’re ready for it versus when it’s time, has to be one of the greatest luxuries of flying in the front. Despite licking clean my first two courses, I managed to leave room for dessert: a banana cheesecake with butter crumble and a selection of cheeses. In upper cabins, I told myself, time is fake and the food is constant.
In that spirit, lunch service had barely ended before I gave in to a childhood comfort and ordered a Milo—a chocolate malt beverage familiar to anyone who grew up in Asia. It arrived with more snacks: muffins, chocolate, and chips. “You can have them all,” said the attendant as I wavered.
Warm mug in hand, I turned to Scenes From a Marriage with Jessica Chastain—an ill-timed choice as it turned me into a sniveling mess. Why is it that we’re so prone to tears at 30,000 feet? Singapore Airlines’ entertainment isn’t wildly different from any other airline, but I enjoyed the range of live television to choose from, from BBC News to a Premier League football match.
If I’m honest, it was the 10-hour mark that weighed most heavily—that strange, suspended stretch that feels like no-man’s-land, when neither departure nor arrival feel graspable. That’s when you order a Kris Sling, the airline’s riff on the Raffles Hotel classic, a tropical holiday in cocktail form. If you’re lucky, it might even coax you into a second nap.
Chapter 3 (12 hours – landing)
Start readjusting for eventual arrival; log into Wi-Fi and do some prep for the week ahead
I was roused by a big, lusty scent drifting through the cabin that unmistakably belonged to a satay chicken. Things were looking up. I’d picked the Singapore carrot cake with prawns for my final meal, which turned out to be a deeply satisfying dish made of radish and rice flour, with prawn and pickled turnip. At 35,000 feet, the physics (and chemistry) of heating and serving complex foods is a minor miracle, but Singapore Airlines appears to be onto something—everything I tasted would hold its own at any restaurant on solid ground.
Another strong suit of Singapore Airlines is the dependable Wi-Fi. It’s available across all cabins once you’re cruising above 10,000 feet, though I deliberately held off until the final-thirds of the flight. It is what kept me from clinging on to my devices when I could be doing almost anything else (eating, mostly—sleeping, some). There’s plenty of time for emails when you land.
I liked using this stretch of my journey, too, to get to know the crew. They’re at their most relaxed in that in-between hour—after the final service and before landing preparation begins. As it happened, the head of the cabin had the same idea and stopped by for a chat. We got on instantly; she was a BTS super fan and made an ambitious attempt to recruit me.
Somewhere during the conversation, I presented her with a slightly odd request. On a previous Singapore Airlines flight, in economy, I’d been offered a snack of Ikan Bilis, a store-bought bun stuffed with chili anchovies, the kind you might find at a 7-Eleven in Singapore. I hadn’t thought to pick one up on this last trip and wondered if there might be any on board. She smiled and said she’d check, though she doubted it.
