Airline: Royal Jordanian

Flight Number: RJ111 and RJ112

Plane: Boeing 787-8

Cabin: Business Class (Crown Class)

Seat: 4D (LHR to AMM), 2A (AMM to LHR)

This Flight

This is my view of my flight from Heathrow to Amman flying with Royal Jordanian.

The reason for this flight was a business trip to Riyadh, and looking at the various options, Royal Jordanian was the cheapest, and an airline I was yet to fly with.

RJ112 leaves Heathrow at 16:05 landing in Amman at 00:15.

RJ111 leaves Amman at 11:50 and lands in Heathrow at 14:45.

Checking In

Because I wanted to get to the airport early (and RJ’s desks would open 3hrs before in Heathrow), I elected to pack hand luggage. So, all I needed to was to download my ticket onto my phone and scan in at Security.

One annoyance I had was that I had pre-selected my outbound seat when booking as 2A – which had been moved to 4D. Despite my best efforts checking in online this seat had been allocated to someone else – despite my OneWorld Emerald status.

Checking in on the way back was in Riyadh, this time I checked in my luggage and it all was very easy!

The Lounge

In Heathrow there is no specific Royal Jordanian lounge. I’d got to the airport around 11am, and enjoyed lunch in the Cathay Pacific Lounge, before heading to the American Airlines Lounge for desert!

In Amman, I went to the Crown Class lounge, you can find me review here.

The Plane

This flight was on Royal Jordanian’s Boeing 787-8.

RJ’s 787-8’s have all the same layout, which is 24 Business Class Seats (they call it Crown Class) and 246 Economy Class eats.

Seemingly Royal Jordanian don’t do First Class or Premium Economy.

The Seat

Royal Jordanian call their Business Class “Crown Class”, and slightly frustratingly their seats are in 2-2-2 configuration – which means hopping over your neighbour. As usual, I have done a seat-specific review, which you can find here.

As I said above, I was slightly annoyed that my seat was changed to 4D, but it sort of worked out. On my outbound I had someone next to me, and 4D offers direct aisle access. On my inbound I had 2A and nobody was sat next to me – so it all worked out.

Food and Drink

Drinks

Unlike most other airlines on neither the flight to Amman or back to Heathrow was any champagne (or anything else) offered other than a water bottle.

However once airborne, a list of wines, beers and cocktails were provided.

After takeoff, I had a beer, served with nuts – and went for some wine during the meal course.

Food

One of the things that make Royal Jordanian interesting is there approach to food. Many airlines will have a set menu which you order choices from.

In the case of Royal Jordanian, there is a menu – but the delivery of the food comes on a trolley. This means that you an effectively pick what you want buffet style – which I thought was interesting and unique!

The starter on the Amman flight was a series of salad items and pasta. On the Heathrow flight, there was more salad, but this time with goat’s cheese and asparagus.

Both flights had the same styles of main courses, which were beef and chicken with rice or potatoes and vegetables. Because it was buffet style you can mix and match as you want!

What followed main courses was then cheese, which was severed with nuts – and a bottle of Port on the trolley!

Finally, the trolley came round with sweet deserts. On the Heathrow leg I didn’t fancy anything more than cheese – but on the Amman leg, I had a brownie with ice cream.

Snacks, etc

Once the dinner service was done, I was very full and couldn’t eat any more!

For those who may, I am not sure what the offering (if anything) was. For such a short flight, 2 meal services were probably overkill. On the longer US routes, I would be interested to see what they offer!

Amenities Kit

On both Amman and Heathrow flights, the Amenities Kit was the same.

The Amenities Kit comes in a nice leather bag, within the bag included;

• Ear plugs
• Mouth wash
• A toothbrush
• Hand cream
• Lip balm
• A comb
• Eye mask
• Socks

It’s not a bad amenities kit really – and probably better than the ones BA churn out on every flight.

Entertainment

The entertainment on this flight is a relatively well-proportioned screen, which is controlled by a small remote control next to the seat.

There were a variety of options in terms of music, film and TV available – but the options were limited and not necessarily that ‘new’.

Wifi

Neither of these flights had Wifi available on the aircraft, which was a bit disappointing. I wasn’t in need of it – and in fact being offline gave me plenty of time to do ‘offline work’ – but doing this route regularly, or further afield, I can see this could be a problem.

Cabin Crew

On both of my flights the cabin crew were great. The dinner service was handled brilliantly, although I did find the drinks service took a while.

Once drinks were served, all passengers were regularly asked if they wanted topups – and in some cases passengers were actively encouraged to drink another bottle of wine between the two of them!

The cabin crew were certainly attentive, polite and helpful – and I thought did a great job!

Landing

Landing in Amman was straightforward…..however a re-check through security was needed to get to my connecting flight. The Security were really bad (both times), and insisted on making me wait a very long time to have every piece of my hand luggage checked and scanned for something. In other cases, passengers were being pulled over for bringing back a ceramic bowl – again Security couldn’t seem to fathom it was a gift.

Landing in Heathrow was a lot better – I had a short wait for luggage, and it was off to get an Uber home!

Conclusion

There are many great things about Royal Jordanian. Whilst the seats are annoying in 2-2-2, the seats themselves are pretty good (albeit not the best design in the world). The meal service was great as was the food, and the drinks plentiful.

The entertainment was ‘OK’ and as I was working, I didn’t really watch it – but not having any Wifi would annoy me if I was on a longer flight and I was trying to work.

Other than those points, I think I’d happily fly again with Royal Jordanian!