Singapore Airlines will soon offer wireless Bang & Olufsen headphones in first class

[Update: Singapore Airlines has since confirmed with Business Traveller that wireless headphones will be offered to first class Suites passengers flying to Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Zurich and London]

Singapore Airlines will soon offer wireless Bang and Olufsen headphones to passengers flying in its first class Suites on select routes operated by its Airbus A380 aircraft, as part of a wider effort to upgrade its audio offerings for its most premium passengers.

The headphones are variants of Bang and Olufsen’s noise-cancelling Beoplay H9i model, which are able to operate for up to 18 hours of playtime.

At this stage, it is unclear precisely which routes will be seeing the new wireless headphones and which ones won’t, though it is clear not all Suites travellers will be offered them.

That being said, first class passengers on services that won’t get the wireless headphones aren’t going completely ignored. Starting this month, Suites passengers on all routes operated by Singapore Airlines’ newest A380s – featuring its new Suites products – will get wired versions of the Beoplay H9i headphones, prior to the wireless versions being rolled out on select services.

These will be followed by a progressive rollout of wired versions across the rest of the airline’s A380 Suites and first class passengers in November.

It should also be noted that while the wireless versions of the headphones do offer sufficient playtime to be usable for the much of Singapore Airlines’ upcoming 18-hour-45-minute non-stop services to New York, travellers on this route unfortunately won’t be getting them as the route is due to be flown by the airline’s recently delivered A350-900ULR aircraft, which doesn’t feature any first class seating.

Bang and Olufsen’s Beoplay H9i headphones notably feature an aluminium touch interface, along with real leather and adaptive memory foam on the earpieces.

Travellers will also be able to purchase selected Bang & Olufsen products on the airline’s online store, krisshop.com using cash, Krisflyer miles or a combination of the two.