British Airways is making sure the union jack continues to fly over Australia with a daily Boeing 777 flight to Sydney.
It is the last European carrier to serve Australia with its own metal and full points to it for hanging in there.
This may give British Airways an aviation empire upon which the sun never sets but it is a domain that could use some reforms.
These are in the pipeline in the form of a new business class due to arrive with the airline’s A350s but it will be some time before they work through the system.
READ: British Airways unveils spiffing new business class.
I have to confess to having a bit of soft spot for the British flag carrier: my first ever taste of business class was on a British Airways flight between Pittsburgh and London in the 1990s and, like many first times, it was a magical experience.
This was not just because of the plush armchair seats, good food and fine wine but because we saw the Aurora Borealis as we winged our way across the Atlantic.
Fast-forward to 2019 and magical is not a word I would use to describe the current BA Club World, although my flight from Sydney to London was not as bad as some had led me to expect.
Disillusionment started to creep in when I tried to reserve a seat on my two-stage trip from Sydney to London via Singapore. It simply hadn’t occurred to me that they would charge for seat assignment in business class.
On most airlines these days, where you sit is not such a big deal. On British Airways it is, the airline’s weird 2-4-2 business class layout, with half the seats facing backward, means some seats are worse than others.
I could reserve a seat, I discovered, but it would cost 174 euros – 68 euros to Singapore and 96 euros from Singapore to London. This was despite being a Qantas silver frequent flyer.
As it turned out, the seats became free in the week before I traveled so I was able to secure forward-facing aisle seats.
Check-in at Sydney Airport was painless and the business class lounge is now in “the House” a mid-sized Etihad lounge that’s quite comfortable but on the other side of the terminal from the gate.
The odd configuration makes settling into the plane an interesting experience.
The strange sensation of sitting down and facing somebody forces passengers into exchanging pleasantries as they ponder social implications of raising the privacy screen.
It turned out that nobody with whom I conversed particularly liked the layout but they considered BA’s business class better value than competitors such as Qantas and Singapore Airlines.
To be fair, the seats are not horrible. They’re surprisingly comfortable in recline but too short and too narrow — just 20 inches wide and 72-73 inches long — for bigger people when it comes to lie-flat mode. No amount of brand-name linen cures that, although the decent sized pillow was welcome.
As with many outdated designs, storage is a problem. There’s a drawer at foot level but it’s difficult to access, particularly when the fold-down footrest is deployed. The same goes for laptop power.
Deploying the footrest also blocks aisle access for the person occupying the seat in front of the one next to you.
There’s a reasonably-sized swing-out touch-screen that proved easy to use and that allows you to access BA’s quite acceptable collection of films, TV shows and other options.
The headphone socket is next to the right shoulder and the noise canceling headphones were good enough that there was no compulsion to unpack the Bose alternative.
Good points included a nicely-designed tray table that pulled back for food service while allowing movement in and out of the seat in half mode and providing somewhere to put stuff.
An amenities kit from The White Company contained socks, a comfortable eyeshade, earplugs, a toothbrush and a useful pen as well as the usual moisturizer/lip balm pack.
We didn’t get a welcome drink after boarding in Sydney — but it would apparently have been Champagne Canard_Duchene “Cuvee Leonie” Brut if we had — and turbulence meant there was some delay in the follow-up, post-take-off libation.
When it did arrive it wasn’t quite what I’d requested and there appeared to be some difficulty attracting attention, including with the call button, to get it modified. I was impressed, however, by the cut glass/crystal tumbler.
The menu offered four entrees, three mains, three desserts and a cheese board.
I opted for the Proscuitto, which was delicious but set me up for another disappointment.
The grilled beef was nuked in a way only the British can overcook things and brought new meaning to the term “well done”.
It was a sad accompaniment to luscious the Fortius Reserva 2010 Spanish wine — one of the two red wine choices — with which it was washed down.
Partially offsetting the steak-based culinary crime was a very tasty antipasti plate towards the end of the flight that included a spiced chicken kebab, hummus, muhammara and labneh cheese.
This was accompanied by a lovely coconut and orange cupcake and black cherry pie tartlet.
The staff were pleasant and attentive, chatting amiably with passengers, and after the initial drink mix-up, there was only one other hiccup.
That was partially my fault for not checking more closely the jacket they handed me and failing to realize it wasn’t mine when I left the plane in Changi.
The system caught up with me when I checked in at the lounge and my inadvertently purloined garment was replaced by the real thing.
Most people continue their Journey on the 777 after a short tech break but I switched to the A380 service leaving after a short break of just over two hours.
That gave me time to visit the BA lounge and have a shower. You can do that on the 777 service too but you have to be quick and hope the showers are not busy.
For reasons that are not entirely clear but presumably involve money, BA has opted to split its A380 across both levels. I opted for the upper deck with a 2-3-2 seating configuration.
The seat seemed pretty much the same as the one in the 777 but the crew was older and a little more efficient.
No problems with the food on this flight — the grilled snapper in tarragon cream source was fine — and the traditional mixed grill breakfast was great. No one can do a hearty breakfast like the Brits.
Even so, I would foolishly go on to try steak again on one of my subsequent flights with much the same result as the first.
I did six legs with BA on this particular trip and my other observation is that Australians — and even Americans — may be a bit shocked by what passes for business class in the airline’s smaller planes plying routes in Europe.
It was essentially economy class with the seat next to you blocked off.
As far as I could tell, you get an inch of extra seat pitch which brings it up to 30 inches, compared with a barely humane 29 inches in Euro Traveller.
You do get food and drink and there was another of those great breakfasts on one flight to offset the pain of tight seating
Still, selling economy seats as business class is not really cricket in my view.
BA is in the process of correcting some of its pitfalls with a £6.5 billion investment program that is seeing changes to lounges and inflight product as well as new aircraft and routes.
Until those changes arrive, flying on the airline will remain a case of balancing value and product.
