Flight Review: Royal Jordanian Crown Class (Business) A330 from BKK to CAN

Royal Jordanian has interesting fifth freedom flights out of Bangkok to HKG, CAN, and KUL. This time, I was flying their route from BKK to CAN in Crown Class (what they call their business class product).

My first impressions of the cabin were not great. The cabin looked old and tired, and the seats were quite worn down. I was originally assigned seat 2K, but there was something wrong with the arm rest of the seat, so a flight attendant asked me to switch to seat 1K.

In business class, there ended up being 5 passengers. The cabin had 4 rows of seating in a 2-2-2 configuration.

I was offered a pre-departure beverage of water, orange juice, or apple juice, and then I was given a menu and wine list, headphones (noise-canceling), and offered some Arabic coffee (although no dates). Just based on the way the female flight attendant offered me the menu, I knew that she’d be great.

There was a pillow and blanket at every seat. The pillow was large and fluffy, and the blanket was light. The seat was actually pretty comfortable for lounging, and there was plenty of legroom, but it just looked a bit old and worn. No real complaints for a short hop to Guangzhou.

The flight time to Guangzhou was 2 hours and 45 minutes. I had pre-ordered a special meal, and the flight attendants noted that it was on the manifest (and on my boarding pass), but for whatever reason, my special meal wasn’t catered. When the flight attendants found out about this mistake, they were super apologetic and tried their best to figure out something that would work. They even offered me things from their crew meals, but I told them it really wasn’t necessary (I was pretty full from grazing in three different lounges at BKK).

I ended up receiving the noodles and stir-fried vegetables that came on the side of the fish entree. The food wasn’t great (the salad appeared to be served without dressing, the bread was bad, the noodles were quite salty, dessert was fine), but I wasn’t very hungry.

After a few bites of the meal, I ended up reclining my seat and taking a short nap. The bed is angled flat, and it was actually pretty comfortable. It reminded me of American Airline’s old “next generation business class” seat, which I’ve slept in just fine. Obviously, there are much better business class seats out there, but this wasn’t bad for a short flight.

Overall, Royal Jordanian wouldn’t be my first choice, but I’d be happy to fly them again. The best part of the flight was the service from the female flight attendants.