Review: British Airways Club Suite to Dubai

British Airways BA107
London Heathrow (LHR ) – Dubai (DXB)
Thursday 26 September 2019
Depart: 12:50
Arrive: 23:05
Duration: 7.15hr
Aircraft: Airbus A350
Seat: 10A (Club Suite)

This is my review of the British Airways Club Suite on an A350 flight from London to Dubai. Both the Club Suite and the A350 are new to British Airways. The seat is a big improvement on the airline’s current 8 across yin-yang configuration in Club World, a design that is nearly two decades old.

Dubai was the first long haul destination to get the new product in September 2019. To start, British Airways will operate a single daily flight from Dubai featuring the new seat. By March 2020 two of the three daily flights to London will offer the Club Suite.

The review will focus primarily on the new seat and hard product. The service and the soft product is only mentioned where it is has changed due to the introduction of the new seat and cabin.

The Expat Flyer view

Highs	Lows
Stylish and elegant ambience Lots of privacy Spacious in both seat and sleep mode Happy staff	Slow and expensive WiFi Lumpy flatbed Impractical storage Poorly design power socket Wear and tear already showing

Cabin

The Club Suite cabin makes a great first impression. The larger windows flood the cabin with light. The combination of grey and blue tones looks quite elegant. The large high definition IFE screens also add a contemporary touch. Other passengers were clearly impressed. Soon after boarding several people on my flight started taking photos of the cabin.

While there is noticeably more headspace around the centre of the cabin the aisles are clearly narrower. It feels quite a bit cramped. Trying to pass other passengers in the aisle is difficult if not impossible. With the new layout, it is not as easy to step out of the aisle to let another passenger pass. Boarding seemed to be a bit slower as passengers needed to wait for others to finish stowing luggage and take their seats before passing them.

The cabin is divided into two. A large front cabin with 11 rows and a smaller mini cabin of three rows. The second set of aircraft doors, a couple of toilets and the Club Kitchen separate the two cabins.

The Club Suite

The Club Suite is a reverse herringbone seat angled towards the windows. Similar layouts can be found on a number of other airlines, including Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways and Air France. This version of the seat has a fixed IFE screen. The table pulls out from underneath the screen. British Airways has adapted the design to add a sliding door, hence the Club Suite branding.

Prior to this flight, I would have said that this design was my favourite type of Business Class seat. The angle gives great views out of the windows while offering a high degree of privacy. I have always found these seats to have a decent amount of space and storage.

The seat fabric and stitching, recessed reading light, touch screen controls and high definition IFE screen combine to create quite a premium impression. There is no question that the Club Suite looks good.

Door

Much has been made of the addition of a sliding door. This is a feature that has been more commonly reserved for First Class. Although, Qatar and Delta have both recently introduced doors to their Business Class products.

Passengers on my flight were obviously quite intrigued by the new door. It turns out British Airways keeps the doors locked open during boarding. This caused a bit of an issue.

At least six passengers in my cabin managed to pull the red emergency release handle while trying to close the door. Apparently, this has been happening quite often. The crew then had to go through the cabin resetting the doors before push back. This did not look like a completely straight-forward process.

It might be better for the doors to be left unlocked during boarding and then simply locked as part of the pre-departure cabin checks.

The door did not really add much in the way of privacy. The angle of the seat means there are no other passengers in your eye-line anyway. I can see, though, that while napping or sleeping it does creates a little more of a cosy environment.

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Flatbed

The Club Suite easily converts to a fully flatbed. The seat controls are on an easily accessible small touch screen with intuitive icons.

The armrest at the side of the seat can be lowered to provide extra space around the shoulders and elbow. There was also plenty of space around the footwell. I am exactly 6 feet tall and felt able to fully stretch out.

The bed really looks comfy when made up with The White Company mattress topper, blanket and pillows. It was reasonably comfortable on my back. However, on my side was a different matter. It felt quite lumpy and uncomfortable. I am a side sleeper in the air and worry I will struggle in the Club Suite. Hopefully, this is just a new seat issue and they will be broken in over the coming months.

My favourite position in the new seat was one that British Airways probably never intended. For a large chunk of the flight, I sat up on the bed, legs crossed with a pillow to support my back and the tray table fully extended. This was a really comfortable position to work in.

Table

This may sound odd but I loved the table. It is really well designed. It slides out smoothly from underneath the IFE screen at a slight angle and unfolds to provide a large amount of space.

It’s very sturdy which is, sadly, not always the case even in Business Class. Most importantly, even when unfolded the table pushed back, making it easy to get in and out of the seat.

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Seat belt

The Club Suite has a three-point seat belt with a shoulder strap. The shoulder strap needs to be used during taxi, take-off and landing only. During the rest of the flight, the shoulder strap can be unhooked from the belt.

Apparently, this is a trade-off. The alternative option would be a thicker lap belt with an incorporated airbag. However, it seems some passengers do not like the heavier, less flexible lap belt.

I am not a fan of the three-point seat belt for both design and comfort reasons. It looks cluttered and felt a little tight around the shoulder. Unhooking the shoulder strap was also a bit fiddly. I imagine there are going to be quite a few passengers who will struggle with it.

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Storage and power

One of the common criticisms of the current Club World seat is the lack and location of at-seat storage. British Airways promised that the Club Suite would have 40% more storage. While there is definitely more space, I am not convinced it is very practical.

There are four separate storage compartments in the Club Suite. One at shoulder level, two under the side table and one by your feet. While there is more space in total each one is individually quite small. And the space at foot level can not even be used during take-off or landing so seems a little redundant from my perspective.

There is space for a passport, a phone and the amenity kit but you’d struggle to store anything larger. For instance, there is no place for a laptop and you would even find it hard to stow a book.

This seems worse than the current Club World seats. I can usually put everything I need for a flight including a laptop in the floor tray. That’s not an option in the Club Suite. I was up and down a few times in flight to get items out of the overhead luggage compartment.

There were two USB power points in the Club Suite. The orientation of the powerpoint is a bit tricky. It has been squeezed into a tight corner in the largest of the storage compartments. The plug for my MacBook Pro would not fit into that space and could not be plugged in as a result. Anyone else with a MacBook or similar power cable is going to have the same problem.

IFE

The Club Suite has a large, high definition fixed screen. The IFE can be used from gate-to-gate and I noticed a few passengers cracked on with films before we had pushed back. This addresses one of the big complaints from passengers about the current Club World seats where the screens have to be stowed away for taxi, take-off and landing.

There is also a new look for the IFE user interface. It looked good and seemed pretty responsive. I did not spend much time with it and unfortunately did not get any photos to share except for one of the moving map. There are no external cameras. That seems like a missed opportunity.

Bathroom

There are toilets at the front of the aircraft and also between the two Club Suite cabins. I was impressed by the toilets. They felt spacious with large windows and very well lit. The toilets were stocked with The White Company hand wash and hand balm. For parents, there was a large and sturdy changing table.

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Club Kitchen

The Club Kitchen is located between the two cabins and did not appear to be either in use or fully stocked on this particular flight. There were just a few bottles of water, juice and soft drinks on display.

The galley is at the front of the aircraft so the crew will have to bring the stock through the front cabin. As the aisles are too narrow for galley trolleys this will mean a few trips back and forth. I wonder what this will mean for the Club Kitchen, particularly on busier flights.

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WiFi

British Airways is in the process of rolling out WiFi to its entire fleet. The airline expects to have connected 90% of aircraft by the end of 2019. My experience during the course of this year with the airline’s WiFi has been excellent. It has been consistently fast, reliable and fairly priced.

Sadly, the WiFi pricing and quality of connection on this flight were very disappointing. The full flight and multi-device options that I had paid for on my previous long haul flights had disappeared.

British Airways was asking GBP 17.99 for 150 MB on a single device. Considering that their Oneworld alliance partner and part-owner Qatar Airways is now charging USD $10 for unlimited super-fast WiFi (HT MainlyMiles) this pricing is ridiculous.

Frustratingly, the connection also dropped a couple of hours into the flight. I was never able to reconnect after that. However, my card was charged three times by British Airways for a single purchase and I had to request a chargeback from American Express.

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Wear and tear

This was a brand new aircraft which had only been delivered to British Airways in July 2019. The seat was already beginning to show a little wear and tear in a few places. I also suspect that the material used on the sliding door is not going to age well.

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Service

The crew were clearly happy to be working in the new Club Suite cabin on a brand new A350 aircraft and that was reflected in the charming service. A couple of the crew mentioned how nice it was to be receiving compliments from passengers on the new seat.

One thing to note. There is a single galley located at the front of the aircraft. Orders are taken and service starts simultaneously from the front and back of the cabin and works towards the centre. This means that there is a lot of foot traffic towards the front of the cabin. If that bothers you, select a seat as far from the galley as possible.

Which are the best Club Suite seats?

On this flight, I was in 10A towards the back of the front cabin. One of the advantages of the reverse herringbone layout is that there are really no bad seats on the plane. However, some seats do have better window views than others. On the A350 rows 1, 9, 10, 15 and 16 have two full windows. As this was my first flight, I wanted to be in the front cabin to observe how the service flowed.

However, the next time I fly the Club Suite on the A350 I would aim to be in 16A or 16K, one of the two window seats in the rear mini-cabin. The mini-cabin is a bit of a sweet spot. It gets the least foot traffic of any part of the cabin. Service also starts simultaneously at the front and back of the cabin so you’ll have your orders taken first and be served first.

And both in London Heathrow and Dubai the second set of doors just in front of the mini-cabin were used for boarding and disembarking. The meaning you are also first off the plane.

Which flights from Dubai will have the ‘Club Suite’?

Initially, British Airways plans to operate a single daily flight from Dubai featuring the new seat. By March 2020 two of the three daily flights to London will offer the ‘Club Suite’.

The Club Suite debuts from Dubai on 3 September 2019. BA106 and BA107 will be the first flights to be operated by an A350 featuring it. The flight will initially operate with the Club Suite 5 times per week. This will be daily from 8th October.

BA106 is an overnight flight departing Dubai at 1.30 am and arriving at London Heathrow at 6.15 am. The return flight BA107 leaves London at 12.45 and lands in Dubai at 23.00.

From 2 March 2020, there will be a second daily flight with the Club Suite. BA104 departs Dubai at 1400 and lands in London at 1800. The return flight BA105 departs London Heathrow at 20.40 and lands in Dubai at 7.15 am the next morning.

I would hope to see the third daily flight also offer the Club Suite at some point. British Airways needs to have a consistent product across all flights out of Dubai if it wants to compete properly.

If you are flying beyond London, certain flights to Toronto, New York JFK and Bangalore will operate with the Club Suite from October. From January onwards its rollout will continue onto other routes. You can expect to start seeing the new seat appear on select flights to Seattle, Nairobi, Chicago, Abuja, Kuwait, Boston, Jeddah and Philadelphia. However, it is going to take at least a few years for British Airways to add the Club Suite to its entire fleet.

Booking the Club Suite with Avios

British Airways charges different redemption rates for peak and off-peak periods. The peak periods roughly coincide with the UK school holidays.

A one-way redemption in the Club Suite between Dubai and London will cost 50,000 Avios off-peak and 60,000 during the peak period. A return redemption cost 100,000 Avios off-peak and 120,000 during the peak.

Beware that British Airway charges hefty fees for Avios redemption tickets. The fees for a one-way ticket from Dubai to London will cost around AED 900. A one-way originating in London will be more expensive at close to AED 1650. The fees for a return from Dubai to London will cost around AED 2,700 which means it is cheaper to book two one-way tickets rather than a return.

British Airways also offers an option to reduce the number of Avios required by up to half by increasing the cash fee paid. This can be a really helpful option if you are just a little short of the number of Avios needed for a redemption.

How to earn Avios via UAE credit cards?

It is not easy to earn Avios in the UAE except by flying on British Airways or other Oneworld carriers such as Cathay Pacific.

Unfortunately, there are no Avios earning credit cards issued in the UAE. However, American Express, Citibank and Marriot Bonvoy are all points transfer partners of British Airways Executive Club.

Emirates NBD Marriot Bonvoy Mastercard is currently offering 150,000 bonus points to new customers who spend $10,000 USD in the first three months holding the card. Bonvoy points transfer to British Airways at a ratio of 3:1.

Spending enough to trigger the bonus would earn sufficient Bonvoy points to get 75,000 Avios. That’s close to what is needed for one return ticket in the Club Suite.

Is this the best business class seat between Dubai and London?

The Club Suite has a lot going for it. It makes a great first impression. And British Airways has also made some significant improvements to Club World recently. The airline has invested in new menus from Do&Co and comfy bedding from The White Company. This definitely makes British Airways a real competitor between London and the UAE. On a day flight, I would be more than happy to fly the Club Suite between London and Dubai.

While the Club Suite is a massive step up for British Airways, I think there are currently just too many niggles with the product for it to be considered the best. One of the best maybe but not THE best.

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