Singapore Airlines refurbishes its Heathrow lounge – closed from 8th February

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• Dubious says:

  4 Feb4 February 06:43

  This SilverKris lounge at Changi Terminal 3 is a big improvement over the previous lounge. It has some window views over the apron and much better food selection.

  However it doesn’t have many places for peace and quiet – it’s often very busy and noisy, particularly the central area (by the kitchen). The bar area is nicer but limited seating here and designed for drinks not for food or working. The showers are nice but they can be a squeeze and I noticed some maintenance issues there already.

  There is also an automatic wine dispenser like the one mentioned in the Iberia Madrid lounge review. I suspect they will include one in the Heathrow lounge. I also suspect they’ll move away from a buffet layout of multiple islands, and instead make it a wall of dishes – which aids access by the staff.
  I hope they improve the selection for vegetarians- especially the sandwiches. They’ve never been as good as the ones they had when in Heathrow T3.

  By the way – the Heathrow lounge has always had showers.

  • His Holyness says:

    4 Feb4 February 08:32

    Yes, all T2B lounges have showers.

  • Lee says:

    4 Feb4 February 08:57

    Singapore Air does a great job. Proper food and drinks, unlike ba. And also, ba never has fully renovated any of their Heathrow lounges!! just move some chairs and buy a new table. Heathrow ba lounges are poor

    • Alex Sm says:

      4 Feb4 February 11:01

      Yes, sadly it’s true… that’s why the Star Alliance lounges at T2 (any of them) are much more superior over any BA lounge of similar class 🛋️

  • BBbetter says:

    4 Feb4 February 13:14

    “I hope they improve the selection for vegetarians”
    Hardly any vegetarians in SG, so no incentive to improve veg food.

    • Dubious says:

      5 Feb5 February 04:28

      There’s quite a lot of vegetarians here actually. Just that a fair proportion of them do it only one-day a week or want Indian food (or happen to be Jain).

      That’s beside the point though – a key market for SQ is connectivity beyond Singapore. There are plenty of ‘western vegetarians’ on the UK-Australia market. I dare say a lot of Indian-Vegetarians on the India-Southeast Asia and Australisia markets too.

      SQ has been historically pretty good with their in-flight vegetarian meals, and the same could be said 15 years ago in the lounges. That disappeared around the same time that the personnel changes at the top occurred. Based on my experience in the SQ SilverKris lounge in Singapore they do seem to have started taking onboard the feedback and are beginning to recognise the relevance of vegetarian options on their lounges once again. They need to train their staff better on understanding all these cultural varieties though – at least the ones that are a sizable proportion of their customer base.

      Even inflight they now have a reasonable vegetarian version/alternative to the satay (not just another bowl of nuts)…

• His Holyness says:

  4 Feb4 February 08:31

  Well done to SQ. The T2 lounge has some of the best lounge food at Heathrow- freshly prepared and chalk and cheese to the slop in the Galleries lounges.
  SQ was in no way as clapped out as Galleries and yet it will be refurbished after only 10 years vs BA’s 16 with nothing in the pipeline 😂.

• Chan says:

  4 Feb4 February 09:47

  Maybe the UA GS area can now be the SQ F lounge and they can improve the food and drink offer. I’ll advise later this month when I fit through if there are any improvements in the smaller lounge.

• Alex Sm says:

  4 Feb4 February 11:04

  My partner and I always try to do an improvised “lounge crawl” at T2B: drinks at United, food at SQ, and desserts / pancakes / coffees at Air Canada 🇺🇸🇸🇬🇨🇦

  • His Holyness says:

    4 Feb4 February 11:15

    AC has really gone down, food is poor, LP champers long gone. Coffees can be good but it depends who’s making them.
    It’s more in need of a refurb than SQ though it’s not as bad as BA EDI which had got as bad as having ripped upholstery on the seating.

• TGLoyalty says:

  4 Feb4 February 11:56

  I can’t believe no one has said BA take note. Full refurb after 10 years not just some new furniture and a tacky bar.

  Update the wash facilities!

  • Tiger of ham says:

    4 Feb4 February 13:00

    Why refurb when PAX will flock to BA either way. Currently the excel spread sheet says no.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      4 Feb4 February 13:48

      In spite of the condition as they pretty much own the market at the biggest airport in the country.

      They’ve lost traffic to the ME3 because of their lack of investment and honestly I’d rather travel LLC from BHX than bother with Heathrow.

  • Danny says:

    4 Feb4 February 13:10

    BA would rather give 10,000 Avios to those complaining they didn’t get a pack of pretzels in Euro Traveller (As read on FT)…

    Not sure why BA can’t build a lounge in 5C, then renovate 5B, then renovate North, then renovate South….

    • BBbetter says:

      4 Feb4 February 13:17

      If they weren’t listed, they would.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      4 Feb4 February 13:49

      So they have refreshed T5B which looks better now BUT I don’t think you need to close a lounge to fix the toilets as they showed by closing parts of the T5B lounge at a time while they refreshed

      • LittleNick says:

        4 Feb4 February 15:14

        Does seem all BA want to do is the bare minimum when it comes to their lounges. SQ just get on with it, yet BA pontificate and do a ‘refresh’ when a lot needs refurbing. Shame they won’t take the SQ approach, if they did they could raise prices.

        • JDB says:

          4 Feb4 February 15:39

          BA should of course do a full refurb (and planned this before covid), the problem is that realistically means closing a lounge without having anywhere to decant the passengers. It’s quite easy for SQ to close its T3 lounge and temporarily send the relatively few pax elsewhere.

        • LittleNick says:

          4 Feb4 February 16:29

          @JDB, Covid has nearly been gone for two years now (in the UK) yet not one lounge has been fully refurbed. T5B is the closest but wasn’t a full refurb and still has the NHS toilets/showers. It’s the dither and delay approach as well as not doing the full refurb instead of a ‘refresh’. Happy to be corrected but there is lack of a public timeline on when a single lounge will get a full top to toe refurb?
          Even if they don’t do a full refurb at this time, that doesn’t mean they need to keep such a poor food offering and then continue to cutting / skimping on the food/drink offering as when they feel
          @Lee One can only conclude it’s deliberate by BA management despite all the rhetoric from S.Doyle making the airline prem hence their silence

        • Lee says:

          4 Feb4 February 15:40

          The ba toilets in Heathrow are disgusting. And less and less food. And the wines are now cheap supermarket style and alcohol cheap brands, in the First Lounge. Staff are complaining themselves. But ba management is absent.

• Dubious says:

  5 Feb5 February 04:58

  This is a quick add-on to provide some references to support my claims in my prior post.

  *Proportion of a country’s population that are either vegetarian, vegan or pescatarian.*

  Singapore – 7% (data from 2020)
  UK – 10% (data from 2021)
  Australia – 12.1% (data from 2018)

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country

  Direct links:
  Singapore
  https://business.yougov.com/content/47585-world-food-day-singapore-major-dietary-preferences-most-favourite-cuisines-2023

  UK:
  https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/trackers/dietery-choices-of-brits-eg-vegeterian-flexitarian-meat-eater-etc

  Australia:
  https://animalsaustralia.org/our-work/compassionate-living/study-shows-surge-in-aussies-eating-veg/

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