Suite dreams – if you can afford them

NEW YORK – The US magazine Newsweek sent one of its reporters on a six-day 42,720 kilometres journey around the world by plane.

Fair to say, it wasn’t the most daunting of jobs. Hosted travel was in the First Class super deluxe suites offered by Singapore Airlines,

India’s Jet Airlines, which offers the feature, declined to
participate in Newsweek’s exercise.

Reporter Jonathan Tepperman travelled from New York to Singapore to London to Abu Dhabi to Dubai to New York “in order to test just what extreme luxury really meant and whether
it could compensate for the brain-fogging, back-clenching horror of about 53 hours in the air”.

The Singapore to London round trip costs about US$12,000; Dubai to New York is about the same.

Nick Cunningham, an industry analyst with Evolution Securities, explained to Newsweek that the airlines’ thinking was that coach passengers are “peasants, so they won’t appreciate it.
And if the airlines made economy more comfortable, people wouldn’t pay for premium”.

James Boyd, a spokesman for Singapore Airlines, told Newsweek that there was a competitive element too: “It was a salvo, a way of drawing a line in the sand. You know, the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in the Cold War by spending it into the ground.”

Tepperman wrote, “The first glimpse of the suites—and I know that I’ll make few friends confessing this—was a tad underwhelming.

“Given the name and the publicity photos, I expected a private room. What I found instead was more like a pod.

“This means a seat—albeit an especially wide and comfortable one—with a screen door on the aisle side that can be slid shut, blocking you from view. But not completely – the partition is only about one and a half meters tall.

“This is necessary for safety reasons (the attendants have to be able to check on you in case of emergency), but it gives the first-class cubbies the look of extremely cushy office cubicles; inside, they feel like old time railway compartments on a movie set built for three-quarter-size actors.

“When the lights dimmed the experience became womblike; I felt like a kid secure in a fort made out of sofa cushions—and equipped with a 23-inch flat-screen TV.”

While the suites are essentially the same on all three carriers, they do offer slightly different distractions.

“Singapore’s all cream and mahogany are the most subdued, while Emirates’, decked out in burled maple and gold plate, take the bling category hands down.

“Do you need a minibar that rises out of the armrest at the push of a button? No. Is it cool? Hell, yes.”

Tepperman added, “I’m usually a terrible airplane sleeper, even in business class and even when medicated. But I managed to do it for uninterrupted hours on all these flights.

“This produced what is perhaps the final, and most important, advantage of this kind of travel: you tend to arrive wherever you’re going feeling practically refreshed—especially if you fly on one of the Emirates A380s that feature a shower, or take advantage of the spa facilities all three airlines offer in their arrival lounges.

“Net result: I walked into my apartment after six days in the air feeling pretty much the way I had when I left—that is, normal.

“That’s an incredibly valuable perk, especially for the business traveller who has to hit the ground running. In fact it’s hard to put a price on it.

“Unless, of course, you actually have to foot the bill.”

Full story at http://www.newsweek.com/id/235146