Airbus grants Singapore safety exemption for popular A380 business class seats

Australians could be seeing more of Singapore Airlines' Airbus A380, which already flies on routes from Melbourne and Sydney to Singapore. 

Singapore Airlines has got the green light from Airbus to fit its delayed A380s -- planned for delivery in 2010 -- with the popular sofa-sized business class seats, according to a report by Mary Kirby of aviation industry specialists FlightGlobal.

The A380 is Singapore's flagship and a backbone of the airline's fleet. Singapore Airlines has one of the largest superjumbo fleets with 11 planes in total. 

By comparison, Emirates has 15 A380s, while Qantas' tenth superjumbo just joined the fleet.

Singapore had expected to receive its 11th through 13th A380 between Q4 2010 and Q1 2011, and a spokesman told FlightGlobal that the delay was "only related to seats".

The extra-wide seats -- immensely popular with business travellers -- are made by Japanese manufacturer Koito, which was mired in controversy when it admitted falsifying safety data on nearly 150,000 seats worldwide. 

EASA (the European equivalent of Australian safety regulator CASA) will also need to sign off on the seats before the planes are delivered.

In a business class cabin stretching about three quarters of the length of the entire upper deck of the A380, each seat has aisle access and converts into a fully flat bed. 

But some seats are better than others -- check out our guide to the best seats in business class on Singapore Airlines' A380 for which ones to pick.

John Walton

Aviation journalist and travel columnist John took his first long-haul flight when he was eight weeks old and hasn't looked back since. Well, except when facing rearwards in business class.