OUT OF LINE

Singapore Airlines (SIA) is globally renowned as one of the top airlines for its service offering – it won six of the annual reader-voted Business Traveller Asia-Pacific awards in 2016 [and five of last year’s Business Traveller UK awards], and as a frequent Singaporean business and leisure traveller, I fly with SIA for most of my trips.

However, I got a rude awakening when flying on SQ805 from Beijing to Singapore recently. I booked seat 56H – one of a pair at the back of the B777-200 plane. When I sat down, I realised my seat was not aligned with the one in front of me, which was about 25 per cent further to the right.

This caused me a number of problems. Having a meal was a challenge – a quarter of my food tray crossed over to the passenger seated on my right, which was embarrassing. Furthermore, some of the cup holder tray was also located on my neighbour’s side, which stopped me from working on my laptop as it was inconvenient. Watching the inflight entertainment was also difficult, as I had to keep my neck turned to the right which was uncomfortable, both physically and socially – it felt rude to face the passenger on my right.

I did explain the problem to a flight attendant, but all they could suggest was for me to inform the customer service personnel. No relocation was offered, even though there were two empty seats in front of me. Has the airline forgotten about the most basic comfort level of passengers? This is definitely not the industry standard.