I was on a flight back from Singapore to Sydney on Wednesday night on the A380. The takeoff was approx 2100 local (midnight Sydney). They kept the cabin lights on full until 0015 Singapore time (0315 Sydney).
At 2330 I asked if they would be turning the lights down soon and they said they would after their duty free sales. I asked again just after midnight and they said they still needed to sell duty free. I told them that it wasn't good cabin management to have the priority on selling duty free at that time of the night over letting passengers get some sleep. I hope my food was safe to eat after that.
They turned the lights on again at 0530 Sydney time. A total of 2 hours and 15 minutes of dimmed lights out of a 7 hour night flight is just not good enough. Surely if they had to sell their duty free (who buys duty free in the air when you have so much choice in Singapore and again in Sydney?) they could have dimmed the lights to a better level. I thought the A380 was meant to have better light features (mood lighting)?
I will be sending a letter to Singapore airlines in the next few days detailing what happened and seeing if this was a case of a one off bad cabin manager or if it is their regular cabin procedure.
And I haven't even mentioned here the bad timing of the meal service on the flight or lack of customer service.
I can't praise Qantas cabin crews enough and after this experience I will be flying with Qantas whenever possible.