I just looked at the Singapore airlines website. Some of the seating diagrams show a Raffles Class in addition to economy.

Can someone tell me what in the world is Raffles Class? Obviously it is better than economy class because the diagram shows the seats up at the front and the food menu is high class. (You can get a freshly squeezed orange.) But the term "raffles class" is a new one on me!

Cathay Pacific has it too.

Anybody know where the term came from?

Elizabethan English or Singapore adaptations of the present Queen's English?

Is there really a need to find out what a "marketing" name means?

AA has "Award winning Flagship Service". I don't know who gave these awards out but I think I missed the award winning service.

Most airlines have some marketing name for their F/J cabins. Don't read too much into it!

It is almost undoubtedly named after the well-known hotel(s) of the same name.

Raffles class is SQ's (Singapore Airlines') business class.
CX (Cathay Pacific) doesn't have a "Raffles class". It is unique to SQ.

Given it's Singapore Airlines, I can only assume it ties in with the image of the Raffles Hotel and its place in Singapore history.

The US equivalent would be an airline that calls its first class the Waldorf-Astoria Class.

As an aside, the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel ranks as my top tourist disappointment. The home of the Singapore Sling and the de facto center of the British expat community in that part of the world a century ago, is today a tourist trap that sells pre-made drinks in souvenier cups.

Mr Brown, shame on you. Being a university professor and all.

It's named, ultimately, after Stamford Raffles of course, who founded the trading post that turned into Singapore on behalf of the East India Company.

A couple of Armenian hoteliers then named their hotel in Singapore after him. It used, though sweaty, to have a raffish colonial charm as late as the 1980s, but it later got upgraded, plasticised and horrid. The Republic of Singapore named its airline's business class after the hotel. Personally, I've always found that particular business class plasticised as well, but I'm in a minority on this.

But naming your business class after colonial governors has a certain charm, don't you think?

Perhaps Air India could launch Warren Hastings Class (the airline, after all, exploits its customers as shamelessly as Hastings exploited Bengal).

Or one of your own country's airlines launch Edward Hyde Class, after Queen Anne's splendid transvestite uncle, dumped as Governor on the burghers of New York and New Jersey (there being room in England for only one queen). Presumably most male flight attendants would die to work for that.

I had not heard of the Raffles in Singapore. (Haven't been there yet.)

That is I am sure the answer.

The reference I read to Raffles on Cathay Pacific was in a third party site so to speak. It used the term with Cathay incorrectly.

Flanneruk: I took a memory hit during the hours I was under anesthesia when I had major surgery few months ago -- takes a while for those chemicals to wear off.

I did not bring a Unix manual home when I retired. Do you by chance remember the modifiers for the kconfig command?
We need to adjust the input buffer size and the manual my friend has does not include enough of the commands that can be used after the -

I know tapping around on the edge of the kernel is tricky, but this modification needs to be done and our Unix guru is out of town on emergency leave.

The help screen fails to tell us how to do it. I gather the makers don't want semi amateurs poking around in innards.

The business class service on Cathay Pacific is called the Marco Polo Business Class. It's a name they've been using for at least 20 years (or when the first business class first came into existence).

Not that Marco Polo's been to Hong Kong. [There was no Hong Kong in Marco's time.] But Cathay Pacific and its business class has been such a powerful and successful brand that now there's a Marco Polo hotel chain, which was spun out of the Omni group after the Hong Kong company bought and then sold Omni. Also interesting that Marco Polo Hotels is part of the Wharf Holding Company, a rival "hong" to Swire Pacific, the majority owner of Cathay Pacific.

The first time I flew to Taipei on SQ, I didn't know the history of Singapore, so the only connection I could make was with the burglar. And David Niven.

The F/A set me straight without giggling.

"Presumably most male flight attendants would die to work for that..."
Apparently the male pilots don't mind, either.