Introduction

This is my review of BA’s Club Suite, during my flight from Heathrow to Dubai in BA’s Airbus A350. The Boeing 777 (which is also being upgraded to Club Suite) is identical in layout.

The Seat

As someone who has spent a lot of time in the older backwards/forwards Club World cabin, there is no doubt the new Club World cabin is a game changing product for BA. The leg room, was huge – and there was somewhere to put your shoes!

One of my ‘hacks’ used to be booking American Airlines flights via BA, to take advantage of American’s Flagship Business – because it’s better than the older Club World. Now, I’d happily take either.

BA’s new Club World has closing doors, which add a lot of privacy – especially as in the old Club World you sometimes felt you needed to breath in when someone came down the aisle! The doors have to be locked open for Takeoff and Landing (for obvious reasons) – but once airborne the Cabin Crew quickly unlock the doors. For some annoying reason the closing position of the doors is 1” from being fully closed.   

Another excellent feature of this seat was the control. Easy to use, minor adjustments were easily done – and most importantly the seat was very comfortable. 

One other thing I really liked is that the table slides back and forth. Perfect for a bathroom break, where you can push the tray back and step out!

Compared to ‘old Club World’ the table was very strong and barely flexed when eating and using my laptop.

I did notice a couple of annoying things about the Seat and the new Club World Cabin:

Firstly, if you have a Mac, you can’t plug it in! No seriously, if you have the plug bit that attaches to a charger, you can’t charge your Mac, it grounds out before it goes all the way into the socket! Because I travel quite a bit, I have all kinds of adaptors, cables and leads, so I could make it work. But if you don’t have them – you may find yourself with a bit of a problem if you’re low on battery!  

Secondly, there seem to be lots of cubbyholes, that are a bit pointless. There was a cubbyhole with the 240V socket, USB’s and headphone jacks and also the IFE control. Behind this, was a very narrow compartment, which I could just about get my wash bag into. Behind this, was a vertically opening compartment about 1” deep with a mirror.

Personally, I like to get to my seat and dump my Laptop, Phone, Passport, Wash Bag, Bedding, etc around my seat so I don’t have to get up once in cruise to get it all out from the overhead bins. Sadly, the new Club World design didn’t prevent me from doing this.   

All in all, I can’t criticise this new Club World product, other than minor details. It was mostly very well thought about, private and roomy – and since many of my colleagues berate me for using a Mac……perhaps it’s me?!   

Conclusion

This is game-changing product for BA – however there are a few ‘design faults’ which don’t make it quite as good as it could or should be!