Scootbiz
Pros
- Extra legroom and wider seats
- Flying on the B787 Dreamliner makes for a comfortable flight
- Meals & luggage included in cost
Cons
- IFE is BYOD only.
- Only 1 toilet for Scootbiz cabin
- No lounge access in Australia
Destination: Melbourne to Singapore
Airline: Scoot Airways
Flight Code: TR19
Flight Time: 7 hours & 30 minutes
As a budget flyer, I pride myself on flying around the globe as cheaply as possible. I’ll happily put up with being squished in economy knowing that I paid only $199 to fly to Tokyo. If I’m paying $50 from Bali, I might treat myself and pay for an extra seat. True class!
That said, sometimes I can’t turn down a business class sale and when pining over where the wife and I should go next, Scoot were happy to slip in an advertisement telling me of their $350 Scootbiz sale to Singapore. I was of course happy to whip out the ol’ card for this. I could have opted for the $129 seat in economy instead but this being Scoot and me not having lounge access to anything other than the Qantas Lounge, of which I need to fly Jetstar or Qantas to use, the costs of a meal and luggage on top of the airfare came close to the Scootbiz price which had everything included anyway.
Worth noting that this was my first trip on Scoot. I have only ever used them to get Jetstar to price match and give me an extra 10% off that too but they don’t price match Business Class fares, only Economy, so I decided to take the plunge!
So did I like it? Well…..
Check-In
The wife & I rocked up at Melbourne Airport T2 an hour after check-in and were surprised that there was literally NOBODY lined up. When I queried where everybody was, I was happily informed that almost everybody had checked-in already. Fantastic. As we were checking out, a Maori family gave a send off with a Hakka. This was fantastic. Customs were quite brisk as well and we went from entering the airport to clearing customs in about 25 minutes. With not much to do and the lack of lounge access on this flight and having bought McDonald’s for breakfast on the drive to the airport, we hit up the lounge for a pot of ice cold beer. Our flight number was eventually called and we were on our way!
Aircraft
All Scoot aircraft leaving and returning to Australia do so on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It offers 21 Scootbiz seats in a 2-3-2 pattern with a 38″ pitch. Economy has 314 seats in a 3-3-3 pattern. 33 of those seats sit right behind Scootbiz in it’s separate ScootSilence cabin and have a comparable pitch of 34″. Unfortunately, the Scootbiz cabin is only serviced with one toilet though I didn’t find this to be much of an issue, even on our fully booked flight.
Flying in the Dreamliner is always pleasant. With a lower pressure, the air isn’t as stuffy and no matter where you sit, it’s quiet. It is definitely my favorite plane to fly on.
Seat
OK, so how can I put this delicately? It was… interesting. It is not a true Lay-Flat Business Class seat of the modern era. It is an old-style Business Class seat more reminiscient of pre-2000 or current regional seats. If you’ve flown in a Qantas B737 business class seat or an A380 Premium Economy seat, then this is near identical.
The pitch is a nice 38″. I’m bordering 6’3 and I was able to stretch out except when I did, my feet kept hitting some kind of bar under the seat which means I had to contort my leg to do so.
The seat has 8″ of recline which is comfortable enough to get some rest, and rest I did! Mrs. BudgetFlyer will tell you that I sleep for most of our flights and this was no exception. Of the 7.5 hour flight, I managed to sneak in about 4 hours.
The leather lining of the seat does provide for some “decadence” compared with Economy’s but to be honest, I prefer the Economy material as it is more breathable. As I am a warm sleeper, I woke up a few times and had to cool down as leather is horrible for that. That said, it is a minor quibble and I was ultimately happy with the seat in general
In Flight Entertainment
If you forget to bring your own entertainment or if you’re an Apple user and didn’t download the Scoot app before the flight, then you’re completely out of luck here. Scoot is completely BYOD. This means that they offer their entertainment over their in-flight wifi. For economy passengers, this costs $10 but it is free for Scootbiz users. I didn’t get a chance to use it as I had a whole 7 episodes of Westworld Season 2 to catch up on, which I didn’t even watch because I was sleeping.
They have inflight wifi as well which used to be offered on a timed basis but I figure that people abused it and so they changed it to data blocks which offers zero value. Their cheapest block cost around $20 for 50mb which I would blast through just turning my wifi on.
Being BYOD only, there are no seat-back IFE units at all. I felt this also made the flight feel longer because there was no real-time tracking of the aircraft so you had no idea where you were.
Food
This is the part that surprised me the most. The meals were covered as part of our ticket and I jumped on and booked it in pretty quickly, ordering the Hainanese Chicken Rice. Being a lover of Singapore and it’s food culture, there was no other choice, except maybe Nasi Lemak. Both the wife and I received them about an hour in to the flight. It also came with a potato salad, a small dessert and a drink. By airplane standards, it was very good and made me droolingly anticipate the real deal when we landed.
Menu wise, there is quite a choice but as is expected, it is pretty expensive. A few drinks will pretty much blow your daily food budget away and you will still be left feeling parched. You can view the menu online here
The website says that food and drink cannot be brought on board but this rule was being openly broken and besides, what are they going to do? Throw you of the aircraft? It’s an absurd rule.
Conclusion
So the ultimate question is would I fly it again? If on sale, yes. Otherwise no. If you can pack all that you need in your carry-on, can get yourself a ScootSilence seat which offers a similar pitch for a fraction of the cost, and remember to eat before boarding and pack some snacks, you’re better off doing that. Otherwise if you had a choice between a full fare Qantas/Singapore economy seat or Scootbiz, to me at least, this wins hands down.