My work (and holidays) entail quite a bit of flying and on occasion, I am fortunate enough to ride in Business Class across the pond. I have ridden in Business Class on several of the major domestic carriers in
America and with this experience, I found it interesting to compare and contrast my first Business Class flight on a domestic carrier I have not flown for 8 years.
Several minor differences were noticeable which made me completely unimpressed with this particular carrier (keep in mind some of these may just be part of the bad luck that follows me):
- No lounge inside security which is standard at every other major airport to which I have been – business class passengers are entitled to free admittance to the lounge to relax prior to flight but this particular airlines did not have a lounge by the boarding gates – you had to go out of security to go to this which is extremely poor
- No bottled water for pre-flight hydration – staying hydrated is very important and this is the first airline I have flown that did not provide this basic necessity
- No writing utensil in the ‘business class care package’ that includes socks, lotions, toothbrush, etc.. – at some point in the flight you need to fill out your customs forms and again seems like a simple item to include to provide convenience for the passengers
- The food portions and quality of food were not different from what they served in coach (I rode in coach on the return trip so I know this for a fact) – for what the ticket costs, you would hope they would not skimp on the food – an example is the plentiful fruit plate served with breakfast – it included 3 halves of strawberries and 4 very small slices of melon or the salad that had 4 pieces of lettuce and a small cherry tomato
To be fair, there were a few things I noticed that were nice:
- The pre-dinner snack of warm collection of nuts also included pistachios which is a first for me
- The airline provided each business class passenger a set of Bose noise reduction headphones for use during the flight
All in all though, this particular unnamed airline was quite disappointing. Fortunately since I did not pay for the flight out of my own pocket, I have nothing about which to be concerned. However, when compared to my experiences in Business Class on other
US carriers, this one falls well short.
