Singapore Airlines has a beautiful SilverKris Business Class lounge in Terminal 3 of Changi Airport with great amenities, but also rather miserly hours for services like coffee and cocktails that make no sense at a flagship lounge for a global carrier.
Singapore Airlines SilverKris Business Class Lounge Singapore T3 Review (SIN)
I had a couple of hours before my flight to Cambodia and my first stop was the SilverKris Business Class in T3, which opened in 2021 (and which I was not allowed to visit shortly after its opening during the overprotective pandemic days).
Hours + Access + Location
This lounge is open 24/7 and available to all Star Alliance travelers departing in business class (or first class, though you’d want to use the first class lounge if flying in first class). Star Alliance Gold travelers flying in premium economy or economy class can use a nearby Gold lounge (with downgraded amenities), with an exception for PPS Club members who can use the Business Class lounge regardless of which cabin they are flying in.
You’ll find the lounge on the first floor (to my American readers, think second floor) in T3…just follow the signs and head up an elevator or escalator. Look for the beautiful batik motif and you’ll know you are in the right place.
Seating
As you enter the lounge, you can turn left or right for seating…it is a very large lounge. The right side was very quiet in the afternoon while the left side had more people (but still was not crowded).
The right side is filled with natural light and features the bar plus a more limited self-serve beverage area. There are universal outlets easily within reach and even wireless mobile phone charging.
The left side is where most of the food is located but has even more seating clustered around the food and beverage stations, including a dining area with booths and tables.
Quiet Area
There are no sleeping rooms, but there is a quiet area with lounge chairs intended for rest (small areas divided by partitions).
Children’s Room
A small area for children includes a couple of bean bags, a chair, and a TV (playing Peppa Pig).
Flight Help
Should you require any flight assistance, agents are available at a trio of desks located near the lounge entrance.
Food + Drink
You can expect to be well-fed in this lounge with a wide selection of food appealing to all tastebuds including a number of soups, dim sum, sandwiches, and specialties like laksa or black pepper udon with chicken.
I wasn’t very hungry and just had a salad.
There are drink stations all over the loune, including many self-service coffee, tea, and liquor areas.
For Champagne drinkers, Piper Heidsieck Champagne was available and self-serve.
But now let’s talk about why I called the lounge “miserly.” You’ll notice a barista coffee service and cocktails at the bar…but look at the limited hours:
- Barista coffee service: 6:00 am – 10:00 am
- Bartender service: 5:30 pm to 1:00 am
The limited coffee hours are downright strange. You have people coming in from all over the world adjusted to different time zones and you only offer good coffee for four hours? That’s just cheap. Yes, the machines are available 24/7, but not the same…
Same with the bar service…as the saying goes, “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
You might say that offering it during limited hours is better than not offering it all. That’s quite true, but if Singapore was looking to create a lounge experience that rivaled or exceeded that of its global competitors, this is a tremendous missed opportunity.
Showers + Restrooms
Restrooms and spacious shower suites are available. I had already showered in Tapei a few hours earlier, but it would have been great to use the shower facilities here had I just stepped off a longhaul flight. I appreciated the extras like a toilet with bidet and a magnafiying mirror for shaving.
CONCLUSION
I’d stop short of calling this a leading business class of the world because unlike other 24/7 lounges like Turkish Airlines or Qatar Airways the more limited service of simple things like barista coffee seem like a shortsighted and miserly policy choice. There are also no sleeping rooms despite very long layovers baked into many itineraries. However, the space is quite comfortable and the selection of food is very respectable. This is still a lounge worth visiting.
Seems to me the barista and bartender hours are correct because the proper time of day .
The clocks are SIN time ; not Tierra del Fuego .
Even set to SIN time, the hours are limited.
The hours kind of make sense for the busy times of the lounge, there is a big connecting bank to Asia in the morning and then out to Europe at night. But agree it is stingy, why not have someone doing both in the middle of the day.
You’d have a different option of this lounge if you were there about 11pm – it gets extremely crowded and quite unpleasant at times.
If you’re someone who doesn’t care about coffee, I’d say it could be up there with both Turkish and Qatar…but for me, the issue is, do they have any a la carte or cooked to order food? Or it all buffet? That’s where it might fall short for me.
The “wontons in red oil” , and Chinese food in general , falls short for me .
The solution is Tiger beer , and lots of it .
I like Chinese food, so not an issue for me.
At the back of the lounge, there is a quiet room where you can lay down, pillows and blankets also provided. Individual sleeper rooms is more a F thing
Yup . I visited in 2023 and there was a napping room past the dining area. To enter, you press a button to open a sliding door. You can ask the shower attendants for pillow and blanket.
Do the Polaris lounges offer tended bar and coffee stations all through opening?
Yes, they do.
Then fly the unfriendly skies!
The lounge is one of the best. Would rather make my own bloody mary as they have all the ingredients. Great wine, spirits and champagne. Food made-to-order (Laksa etc). The coffee hours are fine. Turkish doesn’t come close and as far as Qatar goes – if you are comfortable with the human rights abuses (marc bennett, the gynecological inspections of female passengers) and banning any criticsm of the airline – enjoy.
The coffee hours are silly. Bartender hours make sense as it’s quite a long period during the evening/night but I would absolutely order coffee at 10PM before an 11PM flight to Europe as I want to enjoy the first few hours of the long flight. Qantas would never do this and Singapore knows well it has a lot of Aussie pax, hopefully they will change this policy.
Feel free to fly Qantas