Flight Reviews

Fiji Airways A350 Business Class Review

Fiji Airways has a brand new A350 featuring a stunning new business class cabin and service to match.
Photo of Immanuel Debeer
Immanuel Debeer17 Apr 2020
Fiji Airways A350 Business Class Review
rating
Fiji Airways has a brand new A350 featuring a stunning new business class cabin and service to match.
61/100
18/20
Crew & Service
6/20
Food & Beverage
10/20
Ground Experience
12/20
Overall Value
15/20
Seat & Cabin
Pros
Excellent new seats
Great crew and service
One World partner airline
Cons
Food quality was poor
Some seats were malfunctioning
1/ 0

Fiji Airways recently took delivery of its first A350 featuring an all-new business class cabin based on the popular Sirius reverse herringbone design you can find onboard Virgin Australia, Cathay Pacific and the likes.

My friend Andy from We Can Fly reached out and asked if I would join him for a flight from Sydney to Fiji. Five minutes later I was booked (it doesn’t take much to convince me) and I also managed to persuade fellow avgeeks Greg Stone and Lucas to join.

Person Sitting

Fiji Airways Ground Service

When I arrived at the airport, the check-in area was rather busy, and it took me a good 15 minutes to get checked in via the “premium” queue. Desk staff on the day seemed to be extremely slow in processing passengers, which resulted in longer than usual wait times.

Lobby
Airplane

Lounge

Once I made it through security, I made my way to the new American Express lounge (since they have espresso martinis there) where I met up with the rest of the squad.

Lobby

We could have also made use of the Qantas Business Class lounge, but I find that the new Amex lounge is a far better option (and it was right next to our gate).

Lobby

Boarding Fiji Airways A350

Due to the intense smoke in Sydney, our aircraft was diverted to Brisbane, which added a 3h delay to our departure time.

cockpit

A few espresso martinis and some work later, we went back upstairs when boarding was finally called.

seats

Fiji Airways A350 Business Class Cabin & Seat

Stepping through the aircraft doors, we were greeted with a friendly “Bulla!” before turning left into the business class cabin.

Seats

The cabin interior and seat colour pallet are beautiful and bright with an ivory white colour throughout. While that looks nice right now; I do wonder if this cabin will age well when time as passengers add their scuff marks to those clean white seat shells.

Seats

The seats have a beautiful leather upholstery (also in white), functional controls and plenty of legroom. I did notice, however, that some seats seemed to be faulty.

Seat feature

Greg’s seat, for example, reclined on a sloping angle towards the foot end and had a considerable gap between the partitions of the seat padding – something that should get looked into and fixed.

Seat

While the seat is spacious and comfortable, it has one of those built-in headrests which are very uncomfortable when in bed mode since they protrude from the otherwise flat seat.

Seat

Best Seats On Fiji Airways A350

For extra legroom, you will want to select the bulkhead seats in row 11 since they have extra width towards the foot end, making it the most desirable seat on the plane. 11A would be more preferable since it’s further away from the bathroom compared to 11k.

Seat

Fiji Airways IFE

The inflight entertainment system was extremely fast and snappy (no lag on the input). The movie selection was somewhat limited, and TV series only had 2 or 3 episodes available to watch, but I did enjoy the different cameras which can you can watch on the A350.

TV

Fiji Airways Service

On both my flights, I found the service to be friendly and genuine. The crew weren’t scripted but polite and attentive nonetheless and made sure our champagnes were topped up throughout the flight.

Food

Fiji Airways Business Class Food

This area is a big let-down for Fiji airways. The food was far from acceptable when it comes to business class fare and lacked any form of imagination.

Foods

For starters, there was a green salad which consisted of green leaves and exactly (yes I counted them) 4 pieces of cucumber.

For the mains, there was a chicken, fish or vegetarian option. I opted for the chicken, which was dry and cardboard-like.

Food

Desert was hardly worth a mention; it was a serving of whipped cream inside a pastry with a few chocolate shavings on top; hardly impressive.

Food

Things didn’t exactly improve on the way back where I had a toastie. Although you might think it’s hard to mess up a good toasted sandwich; Fiji Airways couldn’t even deliver here either.

Food

Overall Conclusion

Fiji Airways has done a very nice job with their first A350, which is a considerable step up from their previous business class cabin.

Airplane Wing

Considering you can redeem Qantas Frequent Flyer Points and Alaska MileagePlan miles to book flights between Australia, Fiji and the US; this is an excellent option to get to Los Angeles from Australia on points (and sneaky in a stop in Fiji on the way). The food was a big letdown, but this can easily be improved, and I hope Fiji Airways does invest in its catering to offer a more competitive business class product.

Seat

How I Booked

  • Cash Booking: AU$1680
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