REVIEW: Singapore Airlines – First Class Lounge, London Heathrow T3

 

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After months of waiting, the day had finally arrived.
This was to be my first ever multi-segment trip in F.

I had previously flown UA F from BKK-NRT on and ID90 and had been left thoroughly underwhelmed. After reading TRs on Flyertalk, I knew that UA F was about as low as it gets.

I was sure of it, this trip would be immeasurably better.

And so, I boarded the DLR (the coolest form of public transport in London) and enjoyed the sunshine, on my way to Paddington.

 

View towards my house. Pro tip: If you sit at the front of the DLR, you can pretend you’re driving

I had managed to slash the price of the HEX by using a train booking voucher code, found on Raffles’ blog (headforpoints.co.uk). This combined with my Annual London Transport Gold card, brought the price down to a very manageable £8.90 return. Others who boarded the train without tickets were forking out over 3 times this amount for the same trip. Still though, nothing compared to my F seat costs vs that of the other passengers on my upcoming flight.

 

Heathrow Express Legroom (my pics do get better)

Upon arriving at the airport, I excitedly headed over to the TG F counter. Enjoying the general buzz of being fawned over and having my cases taken from me, as opposed to the usual: stand in a very long line, periodically kicking my hand luggage along the floor, apologising whenever the kick sends it into the back of somebody else’s legs.

Immediately I was greeted with some rather unfortunate news.
“sir, I’m sorry but your aircraft has been switched to an older plane”
“the one with 10 seats, instead of 9?”
“yes, sir. I’m sorry”

At this stage I experienced some quite mixed emotions. I immediately felt my DYKWIA senses tingling (this never really happens when you fly Y) but also felt oddly happy to have been TG’ed. It felt like now, I was part of the club. Everybody gets TG’ed sooner or later, hopefully if I got it out of the way now, I’d be safe when it came to the A380 in a few days.

With that, I headed into the fast-track security channel and made my way to the SQ F lounge.

On the way I made sure to pick up a bottle of cologne in the duty free.
I can’t remember which TR mentioned this but I remember reading about buying a cologne before a memorable trip, so that your memories will forever be anchored by the smell. For what it’s worth I went with Tom Ford and it has worked really well. I don’t use it every day but when I do, I’m instantly brought back to all the experiences that made this trip so great!

The LHR SQ lounge has a very open reception, with stairs leading up to the J lounge on the right and a short corridor, leading to the F lounge, on the left.

The F lounge is small, quiet and perfectly functional.

Costa Coffee!

Service was good and my order of scrambled eggs and salmon was well presented and well cooked.

There’s nothing worse than springy, spongy scrambled eggs.

I spent about an hour in the lounge and was able to eat, drink, send a couple of emails and sort through all my papers and reservations for the rest of the trip. It was much nicer than waiting at the gate but really not worth turning up early for.

If I’d paid the big bucks for SQ suites, I would certainly view this lounge as a disappointment. Within Terminal 3 alone, there is a better Business Class lounge (The Virgin clubhouse).