ScootPlus Review: Seoul-Singapore on a Boeing 787

Scoot, a low-cost carrier, offers some very cheap airfares from Australia to Singapore and beyond. These deals often extend to ScootPlus, the airline’s premium cabin at the front of the plane.

The ScootPlus seats are similar to Premium Economy seats on other airlines. But on some routes, ScootPlus is priced cheaper than Economy Class on full-service airlines.

ScootPlus may not come with the same bells and whistles that you’d get on full-service airlines, but it’s a comfortable way to fly. Given the price, it’s also great value for money – as I recently found out.

In this review, I’ll share my experience flying ScootPlus from Seoul to Singapore on the budget airline’s Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.

Flight Details

Flight number	TR843
Route	Seoul (ICN) to Singapore (SIN)
Aircraft type	Boeing 787-8
Class of travel	ScootPlus
Seat number	3K
On-time performance	We arrived 25 minutes early
Star rating

The route

Flight Cost

I paid AUD382 for a one-way ScootPlus ticket from Seoul (Incheon) to Singapore. I booked directly through the Scoot website.

As it happens, this was actually cheaper than booking Economy Class on Singapore Airlines, Korean Air or Asiana for the date I wanted to travel. It also wasn’t that much more expensive than booking an Economy ticket on Scoot with checked baggage, a meal and up-front seat selection added on.

As well as a more comfortable seat, the ScootPlus fare includes:

• 15kg of carry-on
• 30kg of checked baggage
• Priority boarding
• One meal
• 30MB of onboard Wi-Fi
• Use of the charging outlet.

So, booking ScootPlus made a lot of sense for this trip.

Frequent Flyer Program

Scoot doesn’t have its own frequent flyer program. However, you can earn 1 Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer mile per Singapore Dollar (SGD) spent on the base fare of Scoot flights, as well as 2.5 KrisFlyer Elite miles (which count towards Singapore Airlines status) per SGD. This excludes taxes. For my flight, I earned 310 KrisFlyer miles and 775 Elite miles.

You can also redeem KrisFlyer miles towards Scoot flights, but this is a “points plus pay” style arrangement. It’s not great value and we wouldn’t recommend doing this unless you just have a small amount of KrisFlyer miles that will expire soon.

Airport Experience

There was a dedicated ScootPlus check-in line at Seoul’s Incheon Airport, and I appreciated that the staff checked I was eligible to use it. I arrived a bit early and the regular queue wasn’t long anyway, but priority check-in could definitely be useful during busier periods.

There were a lot of people at Incheon Airport and it took a little while to clear immigration and security. ScootPlus tickets do not include lounge access, and as Scoot isn’t part of Star Alliance, I couldn’t use my Star Alliance status for this. Instead, I visited the Sky Hub Lounge using Priority Pass.

As this wasn’t included with my Scoot ticket, the lounge experience does not form part of my rating for the airport experience in this review. But for anyone interested, the lounge had some decent food and drink options. It was quite busy though, and had no toilets or showers. That said, there aren’t many great airport lounges at Incheon (which I otherwise find to be a very good airport).

My Scoot flight was boarding from the satellite terminal, which required a train ride. Boarding started three minutes early, beginning with ScootPlus passengers, families and anyone who had paid extra for the “Board Me First” service. Priority boarding was heavily enforced – as it should be when you’re charging extra for the privilege!

The Hard Product

The Boeing 787-8 scheduled for this flight was only eight years old. But to be honest, from the outside, it looked older than that. Some of the paint was starting to chip away and there was a lot of speed tape on the wings.

On the inside, there were also subtle signs of wear and tear. For example, my seat’s armrests were a bit scoffed. There were also crumbs on the floor around my seat.

These are all just cosmetic things, though. I’m sure the plane was in perfectly good working order from a mechanical point of view!

There are three rows of premium ScootPlus seats on the Boeing 787-8 in a 2-3-2 layout. This is in a separate cabin with curtains at the front and back.

There’s one toilet at the front of the plane exclusively for the use of ScootPlus passengers.

Scoot originally called this cabin “ScootBiz”, but later rebranded it as “ScootPlus”. For the reasons outlined in this review, I think this better reflects the nature of the product.

The actual seats are similar to Premium Economy seats on other airlines, but without any in-flight entertainment screens. You get a wide leather seat with a greater recline and enough space to fully stretch your legs out under the seat in front.

The seat comes with a tray table that folds out from the armrest, a power socket, an adjustable headrest and a fold-out leg rest which seems to have been designed for people who are shorter than me. That’s pretty much it.

There isn’t much storage space around the seat, other than in the seat pocket, but there was plenty of locker space available.

I was in a window seat and could just get out of the seat without the person in the aisle seat needing to stand up – although this was tricky when the person in front of the aisle seat had reclined.

Overall, this is a very comfortable seat for a daytime flight. But let’s be clear: If you’re looking for a lie-flat bed, you won’t find that on Scoot. This is not Business Class. (Nor is the price!)

Although the aircraft is not fitted with TV screens, you could connect to “ScootHub” on your own device. This offers a (very) limited selection of entertainment, including a single TV show (there were no movies), some music and podcasts. Perhaps the most useful thing on there was the moving map showing the plane’s location.

The ScootPlus ticket includes a 30MB Wi-Fi package. The cabin crew handed out vouchers for this after take-off. While better than nothing, this isn’t enough to do a whole lot and additional data is quite expensive.

The Boeing 787 had pleasant mood lighting. Although the cabin crew automatically dimmed the windows after take-off, passengers could still manually choose their own window setting.

The Soft Product

After boarding, I was welcomed onboard with a cup of water. The flight attendant also confirmed my meal order and asked what I would like to drink with lunch.

ScootPlus includes one hot meal and one non-alcoholic beverage, so I was able to choose from the list of soft drinks, iced tea, regular tea, coffee, coconut water and regular water on the menu. Anything else cost extra, including beer and wine.

We pushed back a bit behind schedule (although made up all of that time in the air), with the ramp agent waving us goodbye.

Although it was a six-hour flight, I wasn’t asked when I would like my meal to be served. The cabin crew served all of the pre-ordered hot meals shortly after takeoff.

I love Asian food, but I’ll be honest – most of the hot meal options did not excite me. These were the choices:

Scoot serves the same meals in both Economy and ScootPlus on pretty much all of its flights. The only difference is that you have to pay extra for them in Economy.

In my opinion, they’re just not up to the standard of AirAsia’s delightful hot meals. In fact, I wondered for a brief moment if Singapore Airlines – which owns Scoot and has excellent on-board food – might have intentionally decided to make Scoot’s meals a bit underwhelming to maintain one of the parent airline’s points of difference.

Of the available options, I chose the Ayam Balado. This came on a tray with my choice of drink and a packet of sweet brownie pieces.

When I selected this meal online, it came with the following message: “Warning: Our spice levels pack a punch. Proceed with caution.” It didn’t quite live up to that – it didn’t leave me breaking into a sweat – but it had a nice enough flavour. The meal came in a disposable paper container with plastic cutlery.

My seat neighbour ordered the nutty korma with basmati rice, which looked somewhat less appetising:

The meal was passable and stopped me feeling hungry for the whole flight, but it falls well short of what you’d get even in Jetstar Business Class.

The rest of the service was very much “no frills” as well. There were no blankets, pillows, headphones or amenity kits provided – although you could buy some of those things from the duty-free “Scootalogue”.

There was no boarding music and the safety demonstration was done manually, with no nonsense. The airline does use lots of Scoot-related puns, though. (The cabin crew are apparently known as “Scooties”.)

Although they didn’t have a whole lot to work with, the cabin crew were excellent. All interactions were pleasant and the crew regularly checked on the cabin. I was impressed to see that they were also regularly cleaning the toilets, including in Economy. Every time I needed to use a bathroom, I found it in a spotless state.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.