I am sitting in aisle seat 10C on this Silk Air B737-800 aircraft bound for Singapore. We takeoff 30 mins after scheduled departure time, the captain explains this is due to heavy traffic at Male International on Sundays.

The seat is basic, with little recline, even less legroom, and no AV screen – instead you can log onto the SilkAir Studio streaming app with your preferred Smart device. I have my iPad (tragically I realise I have left my relatively new Huawei P20 Pro in the lounge 😧) and watch a movie from the reasonable selection.

The meal service offers chicken fried rice, or fish with noodles. I choose the latter and it turns out to be battered fish fillets in a sweet and sour sauce over tasteless noodles (ok I’ve lost my phone so everything seems bad).

The flight seems to take forever, longer on this leg then coming over. And it’s late despite leaving in the early afternoon, thanks to a 3-hour time difference.

We late 30 minutes after scheduled arrival.

Rating: 6/10