British Airways 777-300ER Business Class (Club Suite) Review

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For a recent flight from London Heathrow to Los Angeles, I managed to avoid having to book the British Airways A380 Business Class cabin in which I had traveled on my way over to Europe and, instead, I booked the airline’s newest long-haul Business Class seat – the Club Suite.

I’ve reviewed the First Wing at Heathrow and the British Airways First lounge a few times in the past so I’m just going to skip along to the cabin, the seat and the flight.

British Airways 777-300ER Business Class cabin

Unlike the antiquated Club World seat that you’ll still find on far too many British Airways aircraft, this Club Suite cabin offers all passengers direct access to one of the aircraft’s two aisles courtesy of its reverse herringbone layout.

There are 76 Club Suites onboard the British Airways 777-300ER and they’re split across two cabins.

Towards the front of the aircraft and just behind First Class, is a small 3-row cabin with just 12 Club Suites.

Behind the Business Class galley is where you’ll find the rest of the Club Suites.

I always choose to sit in a mini-cabin if the option is open to me as often, I often find the mini cabins to be less noisy (the American Airlines 777-300ER is another aircraft which offers a Business Class mini cabin).

For solo travelers (or for people who don’t feel the need to be in continual contact with whomever they’re traveling with), the single seats by the windows will be the best choice.

For couples who prefer to sit together of for travelers who will want to communicate frequently during the flight, the center seats will be the best option.

Solo travelers who find themselves in one of the center seats can give themselves some privacy by pulling closed the divider that sits between the two center seats.

On this flight, I was in seat 7K (window seat) at the back of the mini cabin.

The Club Suite

This is what a British Airways Club Suite looks like.

Actually, that’s what 7K on the 777-300ER looks like and it’s slightly different from most other window seats in that it’s missing a window.

Most seats on either side of this aircraft have access to two windows.

Some Business Class travelers may notice that this seat looks familiar, and that’s because it’s not an entirely new seat. It’s the Collins Aerospace Super Diamond seat (found on select aircraft flown by the likes of Qatar Airways, American Airlines and Air Canada) with a door attached to it + a few other customisations.

The door isn’t really a big deal as it isn’t really high enough to offer any kind of meaningful privacy from people walking by (I’m 6ft tall and when I sit upright in the seat, my eyes are just above door level), but it’s great at blocking out light from the IFE screen of the passenger across the aisle.

The seat looks classy – it’s hard to tell from the lighting in these images but it’s understated without being boring – and it has been well thought through.

There’s a small storage cubby (with door) at shoulder height between the seat and the window.

The whole shelf area under the windows (and in between seats in the center section) offers more space for a passenger to store their personal items.

And there’s even more storage space under the shelf.

You won’t be able to store a large laptop in any of these storage areas, but a regular iPad fits into the larger of the two spaces in the shelf and there will still be room left for other items.

There is one issue here, however.

Within the larger storage space built into the shelf you’ll find the seat’s power options and the entertainment controller …

… and if you fill this space up with items that you’d like to keep close to you, a lot of these become hard to access.

This where you’ll find the seat’s universal AC power outlet complete with a USB-A port …

… as well as the input for the headphones (if you want to use the entertainment system) and a second USB-A port.

It’s worth noting that some people may face an issue with location of the AC power outlet.

If you happen to be traveling with a laptop that comes with a large ‘brick’ charger, you may struggle to plug the charger in if you’re using a UK-style 3-pin plug – there may not be enough room between the power outlet and the bottom of the storage area for the brick to fit.

The solution to this is to fit a US- or European-style 2-pin adapter, to turn the brick upside down and to plug it in like that.

Moving on from the ample storage space that the Club Suite offers, we come to the seat’s tray table which deploys from underneath the entertainment screen.

The table can be placed at different distances from the seat, it can be half opened or fully opened, and it’s a very good size.

The controls for the seat are found on a touchscreen built into the shelf, and a light press of the screen puts them on display.

As far as I can tell, you can angle this seat into just about any position that makes you feel comfortable …

… and, crucially, it can be made to lie flat and create a 79″ bed.

Despite the presence of a door (which you can leave open if you so choose), there’s nothing confining or claustrophobic about the Club suite, and the seat is a very comfortable place to relax or work (the large and sturdy tray table is great for working on).

When being used as a bed, there’s ample space around a passenger’s shoulders and head, so most people should be able to find a comfortable sleeping position.

When it comes to seats like these, one point of contention is usually the amount of space that’s left for a passenger’s feet once the bed is in lie-flat mode, as this can be important when it comes to comfort when lying down.

Some modern Business Class seats leave little room for a passenger’s feet, but this Club Suite seems to be ok.

I wear size 10 shoes and I didn’t have an issue with the space above the footrest …

… I’m going to take that to mean that most people will find that there is sufficient room for their feet to get comfortable when lying down. There’s definitely more room for a passenger’s feet here than there is in the fabled Qatar Airways Qsuites.

Ok… so what else do you need to know about the Club suite?

Above the seat, you’ll find some lights but no individual air vents or nozzles, so that’s a slight blemish on what the seat offers.

And as well as the lights overhead (which can be switched on and off via the entertainment controller), there a small reading light to one side of the seat.

That’s just about it.

Overall, this is an excellent seat and a world away from the ancient Club World seat that you’ll find on variety of BA’s other aircraft.

It’s comfortable when upright, angled or in lie-flat mode, it offers plenty of storage space (although a space large enough to house a laptop would have been nice), and despite the presence of a door, it doesn’t feel confining, tight, or claustrophobic.

This is a very good Business Class seat.

In-flight entertainment

The inflight entertainment screen is an 18.5″ HD touch screen, it sits directly in front of the seat, and it’s immovable.

You can’t put it away and you can’t angle it up or down and that last point means that from certain angles, the screen can suffer from glare from the cabin lights.

When your seated upright, it’s easiest to use the touchscreen functionality to control the system, but as you angle the seat back, you’ll find that you slowly get out of touching range of the screen and that’s when the easy-to-use controller (mentioned earlier) will come into play.

There’s no option to pair bluetooth headphones to this system, but British Airways supplies Business Class passengers with adequate (if unspectacular) headphones …

… and passengers with their own wired headphones can plug those into the headphone input and enjoy stereo sound even though BA’s headphones come fitter with a 2-pin jack.

Entertainment wise, there’s a huge variety of options on offer with dozens of movies, TV shows (including some box sets), documentaries, music albums, and games available at the touch of a few buttons …

… and if you want to know what’s playing onboard right now, you can find out by accessing this page of the British Airways website (it will even tell you what’s playing on specific flights).

Wifi

All of BA’s long-haul aircraft come equipped with Intelsat 2Ku satellite wifi with which I have a love hate relationship. The system has dual personalities.

On some days it will be wonderful while on others, the seemingly endless breaks in service can be very, very frustrating.

On this flight, the wifi behaved itself and I got a lot of work done without having to stop every few minutes to wait for a simple page to load.

Upload speeds weren’t very good, but downloads were fine (I didn’t attempt to steam anything so can’t tell you what that experience was like).

A key thing to keep in mind is that on some flights, the aircraft will travel out of the range of the satellite internet coverage so you may not get a continuous connection even if you pay for full flight access.

As far as pricing goes, this is what you can currently expect to pay on a flight of this length (you can pay in GBP, USD or Euro).

If you have a credit card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees, make sure you check what is the best currency to use.

At the time of writing, for example, you’ll find that it’s cheaper to pay in British Pounds than US Dollars and that it’s cheaper to pay in Euros than US Dollars or British Pounds.

Clearly, this may change as the values of these currencies fluctuates.

Amenities

Upon boarding, Business Class passengers find three items waiting for them on their seats.

• A pillow.
• A bag containing a blanket and a thin mattress topper.
• Headphones.

And they find a bottle of water and an amenity kit in the storage cubicle above the shelf/ledge.

The bedding is by White Company and is acceptable. Nothing more.

The mattress topper is on the thin side, and I find that it slides off the seat too easily so I don’t bother using it.

The blanket is much better, but that’s not a high hurdle to clear and anyone expecting it to be in the same league as the blanket you’ll find in Qatar Airways Business Class will be disappointed.

Still, it does a job.

The Business Class amenity kit that British Airways offers (also by White Company) has been around for years and will probably be familiar to a lot of Business Class travelers.

The contents include an eye mask, socks, earplugs, a toothbrush and small tube of toothpaste, a lip balm, a moisturizer and a relaxation spray.

The images do most of the talking here and this is all pretty standard stuff for US/European transatlantic Business Class.

Dining and service

Shortly after boarding, the flight attendants came through the cabin offering pre-departure beverages. The standard selection was available – champagne, orange juice, or water.

I tried the champagne – Heidsieck & Co. Monopole Silver Top Brut – and didn’t like it at all, so I quickly swapped it out for an orange juice which although it was made from concentrate, was a big improvement.

After take-off (and after we had levelled out), the cabin crew handed out menus and took drinks orders.

I noticed that alongside the Champagne, British Airways was offering an English sparkling wine – Wiston, Brut NV – so I decided to see if that was any better than the Champagne.

It was.

A quick bit of research also showed that it was noticeably more expensive than the Champagne.

Lunch orders were taken shortly after drinks had been served, and about an hour into the flight, the first meal service commenced.

The menus

I had chosen the beef carpaccio for my starter which came served with a creamy root vegetable salad, a mustard dressing, and chimichurri vinaigrette.

A mixed bread roll was also offered as well as a small side-salad with farro (a kind of grain).

The beef was cut too think to be a true carpaccio, but it was very nice.

The faro salad, however, wasn’t.

This was the second flight in a row British Airways served me a salad with farro in it and, disappointingly, I hadn’t learned from the first encounter.  This (along with arugula) needs to be never served onboard again.

Next up was the main course for which I had chosen a fillet of Hampshire pork loin with mustard creamed potato, vegetables, and smoked red pepper sauce.

The vegetables, creamed potato and red pepper sauce were all quite good, but the pork was dry and not even the sauce could disguise that. Disappointing.

Up to this point, the meal service had been moving along at a good pace, but it suddenly slowed right down and there was a long gap between the main course and dessert.

Aside: One of the benefits of having a large side-shelf built into the design of this seat is that at meal time (when all the space the tray table is taken up with food, silverware and tableware), you still have somewhere to rest a device so that you can watch whatever entertainment you’ve brought with you (another positive aspect of the Club Suite).

For dessert, I had chosen a warm caramelised sour cherry and almond pudding with vanilla sauce (if a dessert has the word vanilla in it, I’m almost always going to choose it).

The image doesn’t really do it justice because this was enjoyable. Despite appearances, it wasn’t in the least bit dry and it tasted very nice.

There was a bit of a wait for the remnants of the dessert course to be cleared away, but around 90 minutes after my starter had been served, my tray table was clear and I could get down to work.

A couple of hours before we were due to land (it may have been a little closer to landing than that – I can’t recall), the second meal service commenced.

My chosen starter was a salad of grilled courgette, goat’s cheese and blueberries with broad beans, pine nuts and courgette cream.

This was good. It tasted fresh, it was crisp, and it didn’t look like the caterers had tried to get away with just one or two small pieces of goats’ cheese.

For my main course I ordered the traditional British fish pie which, apparently, contained pollock, smoked mackerel, and marinated garden peas.

I’m not sure there was a single piece of fish in this pie. If there was, it would have taken an scanning electron microscope to identify it. It was all potato.

After eating a bit and then digging around inside the pie to see if I could find any vestiges of something that may have once seen a sea or ocean, I gave up and moved on to dessert.

There was only one option for dessert, but that was ok because I’m a fan of Vanilla panna cotta.

This was much better – well chilled (but not too cold) and flavorful and it nearly helped me forget the potato pie I had been dealing with moments earlier.

Overall…

Both starters and both desserts were nice and I’d happily have them again. The first main course was disappointingly dry, and the second main course appeared to be missing some very key ingredients so you could say that the meals were very much a 50:50 experience.

I expect better than that for the fares that British Airways charges … especially on this route.

Service as mostly very good. Apart from an unusually long pause between the main course and the dessert course of the first meal, everything seemed pretty efficient.

All the crew I interacted with seemed very nice, they performed their duties with a smile (quite an achievement considering they had to deal with a colossal ass several times during the flight) and they were good at passing through the cabin between the meals to see if passengers needed anything.

The food was a disappointment while the crew were not. Far from it.

Good to know

There are a few things that you should know when you fly in Business Class on a British Airways 777-300ER that may not be entirely obvious when you’re onboard.

Firstly, your device may connect to the inflight wifi but may not open the portal that allows you to choose what package to purchase.

If this happens, you need to type shopba.com into your browser and that will then open the options page. This information is provided under the wifi section on the entertainment screen, but if you haven’t got that screen on, this may not be obvious.

Secondly, between the meal services, you’ll find sandwiches, snacks, drinks and water bottles set out in an area next to the galley.

I don’t think this is mentioned or noted anywhere on the menus.

Thirdly (and this may be obvious but it’s worth mentioning anyway), choose a seat that’s at least one row away from the galley. I could hear quite a lot of noise coming from the galley in 7K and on a night flight that would have been annoying.

Finally, The bathroom on the starboard side (between 7K and 8K) is the largest one on board and the best/easiest place to get changed. It’s no A380 upper deck bathroom, but compared to the other options on the 777, it’s huge.

Final thoughts

There’s no doubt that the Club Suite was long overdue and it’s great to now have this as an option on select British Airways flights rather than the old Club World seat which, frankly, is terrible.

As a place to relax, work or sleep, the Club Suite is very, very good and while I’m sure some people will say that the door makes it feel confined and that others will say the footwell is too tight, I would disagree.

For the overwhelming majority of passengers, the Club Suite will offer a great experience and as long as you prepared to take a gamble on BA’s catering (which has been very hit and miss lately) that, combined with the great crews I usually seem to get on BA, makes this a very good way to cross the Atlantic.