With a long haul flight slightly more than two weeks away, I’ve been thinking about the last time I was in a metal tube trying to outrun gravity for more than a few hours. It was a trip that took me from Auckland, New Zealand to Cape Town, South Africa where I visited my grandmothers and re-met family I hadn’t seen in over ten years.
Suck it up, buttercup
Since you can’t get very far from New Zealand without a layover or two, my journey to South Africa was via Singapore. It was my first solo trip involving a layover since I lost most of my sight.
I can no longer read the overhead signs or boards at airports, so I had no choice but to get over the general feeling of ickiness I get when admitting a weakness to strangers and request assistance at check in. Getting assistance with international travel is…an experience.
The great, the glorious, the one and only!
Singapore Changi Airport is widely known as one of the best airports in the world.
I’ve been through this airport three or four times over the years, both by myself and in a group. I enjoyed my previous layovers at the impressive airport. I appreciated the gardens, the range of food available and the comfy chairs and couches scattered about. There are more impressive features (I’ve heard rumours of an indoor waterfall) but I always resemble a zombie in both looks and mental state after the ten hour flight from Auckland to Singapore, so I’ve never noticed the waterfall. I do remember a cute little pond with koi fish though.
This time around, in November 2023, I did not get to experience any of the wonder of Singapore Airport.
Planes, trains and automobiles
When you ask for assistance on flights, you are the first person on the plane – escorted to the door by gate staff and then to your seat by the flight attendants – and the last off. I like this feature, I can get settled into my seat without feeling rushed to make way for someone else and often get my own personal safety briefing.
After we landed in Singapore I got escorted off the plane and handed over to the SIngapore Airport staff. As soon as I was out the door but still in that tunnel bit between the plane and the airport building, I got labelled.
By ‘labelled’ I mean the Singapore Airport employee wrote my last name, my next flight number and time on a sticker and stuck it on my arm. It was round and (I think) orange.
Once all the passengers needing assistance were gathered and stickered, we were ushered down the tunnel – all the able-bodied passengers having long since cleared the area – and loaded into one of those fun airport carts. I was the only solo passenger needing assistance, so I got the front seat next to the driver.
I wasn’t planning on visiting any theme parks in South Africa but if I had been, I could have saved money and cancelled those plans because oooohhhhh boy was that airport cart ride adrenaline inducing.
Now I’m sure the cart didn’t go as fast as as I felt it did, but;
- Zombie mode had been activated
- Those carts have no roof or windshield so the wind rushing over my tired face and messy hair made it feel super fast
- What functioning sight I have doesn’t always track movement well – not sure why – so pretty much anything faster than walking speed is just a colourful blur, and;
- I don’t spend a lot of time in the front seat of a car these days, I am not used to approaching stationary objects (like walls) that fast. It felt like I could go flying over the front of the cart at any moment. No seat belts!
It felt fast. The driver absolutely flew through the airport, taking corners at such speed I’m surprised we didn’t go up on two wheels.
We all got ushered off the cart and onto a train to get to one of the other terminals – Singapore Airport has four.
Here comes my first real complaint about the assistance services at Singapore Airport: I have some sight, enough that I could keep track of where my escort was on the train. But I’ve got friends with a lot less vision than me, including some who have no vision at all, that would not have known what was happening. Nothing was explained to me and my escort was a good ten to fifteen metres away. I only knew to get off the train when everyone else moved, not because my escort talked to me.
It might be that I’m being unfair here, probably the escort picked up that I had some vision because I could walk myself off the plane and to the cart. Maybe, if someone had come off the plane holding a flight attendant’s elbow and made it clear they could see nothing, the escort would have been more diligent. Either way, I felt I had to be on high alert or I risk getting left behind.
After another rollercoaster ride through the second terminal, we were dropped off at the assistance lounge (I don’t know the official name, I didn’t see the sign).
It’s for your own good, I promise.
At the assistance lounge, they took our boarding passes off us to keep behind the counter at the front. I did not like this at all. They had all my information, why did they need to keep my boarding pass? It felt like I was being stripped of my independence and infantilised. This is something I’m particularly sensitive of and not entirely rational about, especially when I’m exhausted. I understand that wasn’t their intention, but in the moment it still stung.
We were told to take a seat and we would be collected when it was time to go to our gate for the next leg of our journey.
Great. Awesome. Famously big airport with a rumoured waterfall and I had to stay in this room. I had a four hour layover and didn’t have the freedom to even go for a walk and stretch my legs – the lounge didn’t have enough space around or between the chairs to achieve a decent, leg stretching walk.
Again, didn’t love it but I did and do understand the need – especially for a blind passenger. If I went walkabouts there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to find the lounge again and even less chance the assistance escorts would be able to find me to get me to the gate.
This being my first time getting assistance on an layover, I just wasn’t prepared for how much I would be stripped of my autonomy.
The lounge itself was…pretty small. There were maybe twenty or thirty people there, including one guy in a full leg cast. It was dimly lit to allow for snoozing and everyone was respectfully quiet.
I did like the chairs. Lay-Z-boy style chairs big enough to curl up on and have a nap.
For food and drink there were vending machines. That I couldn’t use. Because I can’t read the screen. Or the instructions. Or find the buttons. There wasn’t even a water fountain that I could use to fill my water bottle.
If there was a bathroom in that lounge, I didn’t find it. To me it seems inefficient not to have one there so we didn’t have to ask for permission every time we needed to go.
I don’t know if its social anxiety, but I don’t like to ask for help or push the boundaries of an experience until I’ve been through it at least once and have some level of comfort with it, so I didn’t ask the people at the front desk for help. Next time I will.
Instead, I just curled up on the comfy chair, turned my headphone’s noise cancelling on and made excellent use of the airport wifi to doom scroll for four hours, give or take a nap. I was careful to keep my stickered arm visible, so I could be found.
Are airports even real?
Passangers were collected, passengers were dropped off. Through all the comings and goings the lounge kept its hushed doctor’s waiting room vibe.
Airports are weird, time doesn’t really work the same there. Four hours feels like a blink and yet, by the time you’re moving again it feels like you’ve aged forty years. Weird places, airports. I’m not convinced they exist on the same plane of reality as the rest of the world.
Eventually, I felt a tap on my shoulder and it was my turn to be escorted to my gate.
I was the only one being escorted this time and there was no cart. My memory is a bit fuzzy on the details, so I can’t remember if we were close enough to the gate that they deemed a cart unnecessary or if we did get a train again and they had enough time to get me where I needed to be without the extra speed wheels could provide. I did make my escort take me past a toilet and a convenience store though, so to an extent, I did get over whatever reservations I had.
A brief taste of luxury…
This is a bit of a tangent, but I wanted to boast about my luck for my flight from Singapore to Cape Town. Economy class had a 3-3-3 seating arrangement and it was not a full flight. Ladies and gentlemen, I got three whole seats to myself. As soon as that seatbelt sign was turned off I stretched out and got eight glorious hours of almost solid sleep. I have never disembarked a plane feeling that refreshed. It was magnificent!
The return journey
ANYWAY, back on track. I came back to Auckland two-ish weeks later via the same route. The flight from Cape Town to Singapore landed behind schedule, which left me with a layover of a little more than an hour. I was not the only one who was going to be cutting it a bit fine to their next flight. I picked up a somewhat frantic energy from the airport staff.
After getting slapped with a new label, I found myself once again in the front seat of a cart – with the same driver I’d had two weeks prior. We avoided hitting any walls and narrowly missed only a handful of travellers meandering about the airport minding their own business.
There was a time crunch, so no time served in the assistance lounge. Rather, I was unceremoniously dumped in the general vicinity of my gate – I assumed. Once again there was no communication. I was told to get off and then the cart was gone.
There were two gate lounges and no people in front of me. Neither of the gate lounges were open. Remember that I can’t read the signs. I had no idea which gate number I was supposed to be at, no idea which gates I was in front of and couldn’t read the signs that would give me all the information I needed.
All I could do was wait and hope that either someone came back for me or someone I could get clarification from passed by. I took a seat and hoped for the best.
Eventually, other people started filling the seats around me, waiting for the same gate as me. I knew this for sure without having to overcome my anxieties and ask anyone, because the conversations happening around me sounded like home. Nothing like hearing a kiwi accent when you’re tired, lost and trying to figure out if you’re on the right flight. From there I just followed the crowd and it was smooth sailing.
At the end of the day
Assisted wasn’t my favourite way to experience Singapore Airport. There is a lot of room for improvement in their services for people in need of assistance, especially around communication and amenities.
The reality of the situation is that the number of passengers who need this service is so infinitesimally small compared to the hundreds of thousands of people that move through Singapore Airport on any given day, that we just aren’t a priority. They make sure we get where we need to go, on time and in one piece, and that’s all they’re obligated to do. They achieved the base goal with utmost efficiency.
It wasn’t comfortable and it wasn’t particularly fun, but then when is economy class air travel ever? I didn’t miss my flights and now I can be confident that I can travel alone, I just need to be better about asking for what I need.
I have nothing to compare Singapore Airport’s assistance services to…yet. For all I know, they’re a world leader on this front too!
Soon I will be flying through Dubai, so we’ll see how they measure up.
