A380

Walking down the airbridge, I could immediately tell that there had been an equipment change this evening: the old, rather boring 777-200ER had been replaced by a shiny white Whalejet. Though I already had an A380 segment on the return in the original booking, this was still a most appreciated surprise for an aviation nerd like myself. Perhaps I should have suspected something when I was handed my boarding pass with the magic words “Main deck” stamped on it. Despite almost seven years in service with a number of different airlines, this would be my inaugural flight on the Airbus A380-800.

Seeing the signs directing passengers off to their Suites and Business Class cabins respectively, I inevitably felt a sting of envy. But this being Singapore Airlines, I must say that I felt reasonably comfortable settling into 37A, already looking forward to my soon-to-be-served G&T. As one would expect, the cabin felt impressively spacious despite the ten-abreast economy configuration.

The flight time down to Sydney is 7 hours and 10 minutes, with light to moderate turbulence expected en route. The take-off alone was a real treat – remarkably gentle yet unmistakably massive – as the 575,000-kilogram aircraft surged down the runway. Being able to use the inflight internet to post this while crossing the equator feels pretty cool as well. However, having finished most of my conference preparations, I will try to sleep a bit now.

Boarding pass

More or less on the day six years ago, I was on the same lunchtime triple-seven departure to Singapore. Like now, I had an onward ticket to Australia. Unlike then however, I am not going to spend three months of melancholia writing away in small cafés or running along St Kilda Beach. This time around, I will head straight to Sydney for a week of intensive conferencing and editing. Nonetheless, printing that boarding pass at Stockholm Arlanda had a certain magic to it. This is really a trip to the other side of the world.