Review: SWISS Senses Business Class Airbus A350 (ZRH-BOS)

Great review. Most a350s are beautiful aircraft, and Swiss continues the trend. Business cabin seems like a hard product upgrade over older versions (like on a330, 777).

Good choice on staying at Hyatt Regency Boston Harbor (keeping that as Cat 1-4 makes for an easy use of the Hyatt card certificate, if you route through there. Decent pancakes at breakfast. Bah!)

Hi Ben. You mentioned how your first meal was not that delicious. I know you mostly go for the seafood dish and occasionally go for something different. What you can do is to consider the description of the meals to give you a better sense of what you are going to get just like if you were at a restaurant. Based on this menu’s description it seems that the beef dish may be a better choice.

The menu appears to do a good job overselling ugly pre-plated reheated dishes.
Exchange rate for seat selection is also not in favor of CHF...

A decent amount of nitpicks and average marks for things like food/service, but only docked half a star?

Is SWISS evaluated against only the context of TATL carriers?

Best business class in the world

I usually travel in J class with Ms. JD so actually this new configuration does not really work for me, given that as Ben mentioned the only option to travel together is to pay an extra ca. EUR 1,000 each way, which is just plain ridiculous.

Yikes. Three hour meal service to start, two hours at the end. So five hours eaten up by service on a short transatlantic.

Great review as always. Just a note that there are individual air nozzles on both LH and LX Allegris. Located in the side console, just above the tablet that controls the seat. Looks a bit like a light but it's not.

It's less important on the daytime flights to get the meals served quickly.

Swiss and LH sell five tiers of seats but the reality is there's actually up to 12 different seat types on these planes (let alone that there's three different manufacturers each with slightly different widths and specs). Insanity.

Swiss is funny cause on their website they advertise that dinner is a 3 hour experience...I guess folks who don't sleep like that?

Seems like you had an ok flight. I flew back from Zurich 2 months ago, and the meal service was clearly more extensive with amazing service. The new cabins sure look nice. Many reports of issues with seats and features though...

From my experience, the beef tenderloin/fillet is usually very good on LX flights, and never overcooked (especially on flights from ZRH).

I thought my 3 hour dinner on a nighttime flight out of SFO was due to an inexperienced flight attendant. Based on your review it may be the norm. I don’t expect to rush, but wrapping up the dinner within two hours would give more time to sleep (or work).

My client flew then roundtrip (this same Boston flight with Sense) back in January. 3 weeks between the flights... They booked the Business "Suite" seats on both flights. One of their seats was broken on both flights, and he said they were hard as a rock. He's not someone who usually complains, so I do believe him. I've flown Allegris twice now and both of my flights had at least one of the suite seats out of commission too, and I've read others say the same. Wondering if they have known issues, or perhaps made them overly complicated/too many parts that can go wrong?

I recently flew on Swiss from both Zurich and Geneva, after skiing. Both in economy, and service was gorgeous. I greatly enjoyed it. Not sure why people always complain.

Two USB-A ports? Looks more like one USB-A and one USB-C.

I don't comment that often and try not to be negative or disrespectful but Ben after reading your review I'm seriously baffled how you can give 4.5 stars, seriously it seems 3.5 stars might have been closer to the mark
Your generosity and kindness is in danger of making your reviews irrelevant, unfortunately if you choose to review and score you have to be more honest in your score or just not award a score
I apologise if what I wrote is harsh as I have the utmost respect for you

It seems yet another woeful oversight to spend all this money on much, much improved seating to have the experience seriously undermined by lack lustre, disinterested crew- exactly my experience in Lufthansa Allegris last week- in the business suite. Generally Swiss crew are better- buts it’s far too and miss. Lufthansa crew appear not to care less more consistently - then again their minds are elsewhere striking against management.

I agree with this. I know Ben has addressed his methodology on star ratings in previous posts so he has a justification but it's always baffled me. An unclean toilet, lacklustre service, lacking amenity bag and mediocre food and presentation does not pass the sniff test for 4.5 stars.

I recently flew ZRH to YUL on a similar A350 and must agree on the review. I had the hurried lackluster crew and the same average experience. I was expecting more. I had flown on Austrian on an old 767 out to Europe and the experience on all counts except newness was a level higher and the friendliness and competency only slightly below Emirates. I am used to average as Air Canada is my more likely airline. But I am always ready for a surprise!

Fly Business class for my job and my job is 100% overseas. I must be the only one that does not eat any food on a flight lol.

The trend of reducing restrooms on planes is alarming, especially as this is in favor of cramming more people in the resulting space. I’m starting to pay attention to this more when selecting my flights.

Just a booked an award night stay there with my certificate based on your advice. Street price was well over $300. Thanks so much!!