Be careful which Oman Air routes you book (award value is there, but it’s not all good news)

At the end of last week, American Airlines finally integrated Oman Air as an AAdvantage program redemption partner which means that we can now use American Airlines miles to book flights across the Oman Air network.

Generally speaking, that was very good news, but having now done a bit more research into what Oman Air offers, I think that a word of caution is needed.

Let’s start with the aircraft

Oman Air has spent the past few years simplifying its fleet which means that its Airbus A330s have gone and the widebody fleet is now comprised of Boeing 787-9s only (the airline also has two 787-8s, but they’re not currently operating).

The narrowbody fleet is made up of all Boeing aircraft as well. The Boeing 737 MAX 8 is the mainstay of the fleet (ugh!), and there are a handful of older 737-800s and 737-900ERs still flying select routes.

Now the Business Class cabins

The standard Business Class seats in the Oman Air Dreamliners are the Collins Apex Suite, and there are 30 set out in a slightly staggered 2-2-2 layout in the two-class 787-9s

At first glance, that looks old-fashioned and sub-optimal, but thanks to the clever cabin layout, every passenger gets direct aisle access, there are privacy screens between each seat, and there’s no narrow footwell area to fit your feet into when the seat is in lie-flat mode.

It may, technically, have a 2-2-2 cabin layout, but this isn’t a traditional (and hopeless) 2-2-2 cabin layout. It’s good.

A small number of the airline’s 787-9s also carry a forward cabin branded Business Studio (six to eight suites with doors in a 1-2-1 layout across rows 1 and 2). This was the aircraft’s First Class cabin before Oman Air dropped First Class, and it’s now sold and ticketed as Business Class.

The 737 MAX 8 is a different proposition entirely. Business Class on this Frankenstein aircraft offers 12 recliner seats with 46″ of pitch (leg room), 20″ of width, and 9″ of recline.

Sure, 46″ of pitch is a lot on a narrow body aircraft, but the difference in comfort levels between the Business Class cabins on the Dreamliners and the Business Class cabin on the MAX 8 is still very significant. And that’s worth remembering.

And now the Economy Class cabins

Oman Air’s Dreamliners offer a 3-3-3 layout in Economy Class and that’s the same nine-across configuration that almost every other Dreamliner operator uses, so that may suggest that there’s not much to see here. But there is.

Oman Air’s Economy Class Dreamliner seats offer 34″ pitch where most other long-haul airlines offer 31″ or 32″, and that puts this cabin among the most generous long-haul Economy Class cabins operated today. In fact, from a leg room perspective, it may be the most generous cabin out there.

Yes, the seat width isn’t exactly stellar. At just 17.3″ this isn’t going to be the most comfortable place for passengers with broad shoulders or flyers who are … large. But for a lot of flyers this is a very good Economy Class cabin to book.

Sadly, the same good news doesn’t carry over to the airline’s MAX 8s where, on most, the Economy Class pitch is a much tighter 31″ and the seat width is just 17″.

Worse yet, on some Oman Air MAX 8s (the ones branded Oman Air Connect), the amount of pitch offered is just 29″, and that’s horribly tight.

So what’s the problem?

Well, some of you have probably already guessed what I’m going to write next, but for those of you who haven’t, this is what you need to know.

The Oman Air Dreamliners do quite a bit of the airline’s long-haul flying, but not all of it. And this means that there are routes on which the airline doesn’t offer a wide body service at all.

At Oman Air, no wide body service = 737 MAX 8 service and that means no lie-flat seats in Business Class, no all-aisle-access seats in Business Class, no privacy in Business Class, and seats that offer just 17″ of width and 31″ of pitch in Economy Class.

Currently, these are the longer flights on which Oman Air operates its 737 MAX 8 aircraft:

• Munich (average flying time 7 hours)
• Zurich (average flying time 7 hours 10 minutes)*
• Rome (average flying time 7 hours 25 minutes)
• Singapore (average flying time 7 hours 35 minutes).

Also, later this year, the MAX 8 will be taking over from the Dreamliners on the Kuala Lumpur route (average flying time 6 hours 45 minutes).

That’s not good news at all and it changes things quite a bit for those of us hoping to use miles and points to get between Europe and Asia.

Sure, snapping up a Europe – Middle East Business Class award for just 42,500 AAdvantage miles sounds great, but does it still sound so great if you have to spend well over 7 hours in a MAX 8 seat?

Europe to Singapore in Business Class for just 75,000 AAdvantage miles also sounds great until you realise that this could mean two MAX 8 flights with over 15 hours in a MAX 8 seat.

And how about the poor folks in Economy Class? 35,000 miles for a flight between Munich and KL sounds like a bargain until you realise that’s over 15 hours in a seat that’s just 17″ wide and which offers just 31″ of pitch.

Yes, you get to stretch your legs in Muscat, but does that make things better by much? I don’t think it does.

*Select flights only.

Bottom line

There’s no doubt that the Oman Air Dreamliners offer impressive options in both Business Class and Economy Class (to a degree), and that’s the good news.

The bad news, however, is that Oman Air uses its narrowbody 737 aircraft on a variety of routes that a lot of us would consider to be long-haul, and these aren’t the most comfortable of aircraft in which to spend a lot of time. Far from it.

The key takeaway here is this: Oman Air can offer a great option for flyers looking to travel between Europe, the Middle East and Asia as long as you’re careful which routes you book.

Book the right route and you get a Dreamliner which offers quite a bit of comfort. Book the wrong route and you’re stuck on a 737 for hours on end wishing you’d done a bit more research.