Hello from Italy, as I just kicked off the return portion of my review trip to Bangkok! For the next segment of my trip, I flew Thai Airways’ Boeing 787-9 Royal Silk business class on the 11hr30min flight from Bangkok (BKK) to Milan (MXP).
Continue reading: Thai Airways 787 Business Class: Great Food (Plus Caviar!), Friendly Service
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Yum, yum, yum! lol
I don't understand for the life of me how plenty of airlines especially the highly-regarded ones can't seem to be creative with their meals. Like does it always have to be some random scrambled eggs and tomatoes for breakfast with breakfast meat or cake for dessert?!
It's sad to be honest.
I don't mind the way they served the caviar though it'd be nice if they included a small spoon. I think the mother-of-pearl spoon with caviar thing is cute and appreciate but kind of a gimmick--I would say that more often than not, with a caviar course at a 2 or 3 Michelin starred restaurant, I am still given metal cutlery. I find the diced onions and egg whites to be superfluous--good caviar should stand on its own!
Hey Ben, about those missing caviar accompaniments, the purser suggested that I should try the caviar as a spread on the garlic bread. Wowza! My new favorite way to eat it!
Thanks for the timely review.
I'm booked in Thai business from Frankfurt to Singapore via Bangkok in January, both flights in business on a 777-300ER. Any idea whether I'll experience the same hard and soft product and what the differences (due to the different aircraft and/or the inbound vs outbound long-haul routing) may be?
I've had caviar presented like that as well on ANA F, just in a little jar on its own. Don't really understand the fascination with caviar. I get that it's supposed to signal high end but it just doesn't really do anything for me
It sure sounds like a lot of TG’s lost mojo is back, mojo that Star Alliance partners ANA and EVA had stolen over the last decade. Great to see TG and MH bounce back — all while GA continues to slide.
There would surely have been a Thai food option for breakfast. I'd always choose that on TG, particularly ex-BKK.
MXP is having massive issues with hours-long-queues at immigration atm, especially in the morning when a bunch of long-hauls from Asia and the Americas land simultaneously (not enough police officers deployed at the airport, and e-gates are a nightmare). I hope you weren't trapped in one of those lines...
Agreed, it's great to see TG regain their mojo. I used to fly TG frequently and hands down it served some of the tastiest aeroplane meals I've ever had, and perhaps some of my favourite Thai meals anywhere on Earth. I also frequented the FT TG forum until the THAI News thread became one of the few that got regularly updated, with news about yet more financial difficulties or yet more leadership change involving personnel with questionable qualifications.
This. TG breakfast looks great. I always complain about Qantas business class breakfast as it is invariably extremely limited and poor quality regardless of which route. However last week I flew BA Singapore to Sydney & when I awoke requesting breakfast they advised they had none left. Surely you are joking I said. "No, we only catered 80%". Unfortunately the entire flight was at 100% so I landed starving as I had made the choice to ignore the evening meal and go straight to sleep, ugh! Ah well, reminded me of why I never normally travel BA & definitely won't again, appalling.
Bravo
Fully agree that good caviar should stand on its own.
Agree on the small spoon but disagree on the mother of pearl being a gimmick. A small plastic spoon would do - but metal does mess with the taste of the caviar.
I'm guessing "(nuts and fried fruit)" contains a typo, or some real creativity in menu planning.
Lost mojo?
Not to worry, VT-CIE is here.
Just "visualise yourself flying Qsuites or Air France or JAL or something of that kind! ;)"
Am about to travel on Thai J Bkk-Sin on what was supposed to be an A359 but has since been switched to B788.
Not holding my hopes up about the caviar service. But in case lightning strikes will report back.
I can't help but feel that TG really missed the bag with the growth in Thailand popularity in the recent years, but weren't able to restore US service or expand more meaningfully due to the BKK category restrictions.
The East Asian carriers are really eating TGs lunch with SQ also cleaning house. Even VN has nonstop SFO flights now.
“Service began with a snack mix (nuts and fried fruit)”
“turnip omelet, and stir friend eggplant”
Fried fruit, new one for me.
Friend eggplant, hmmm very Freudian.
I won't fly Thai due to their punitive cancelation policy (not, 'free if cenceled 24 hours from booking', instead 'free if canceled before midnight Thailand time the day of the booking').
They're not competitive with Eva, Starlux, or Singapore in terms of quality or business integrity
Sadly, I don’t think so. I flew Thai from Frankfurt to Bangkok earlier this year and the catering was abysmal. I believe this is the case for all flights that do not originate at BKK.
What perfect timing… you’ve made me so excited for my flight with them this week, PEK-BKK-ARN.
It must be your lucky time with Thai, as my experience was not as happy as you are plus when I write a letter, the company never responds, until now.
Flu with Thai on business class, Sydney to Istanbul and Istanbul to Sydney, both journeys was awful.
I will never fly with them, usually I fly with Singapore, but I like just to try, my heart say no, I should listen my heard. In the and the experience with Thai ruined my beautiful holidays.
Not again Thai
Thai Airways is always a delight to fly. A real treat in the past I really really miss was flying business class in their A-380. What a wonderful plane made even better with the exceptional Thai crews. In the day, equal to Singapore Airlines in every respect. Just last month I flew Thai business class from Frankfurt to Bangkok ( connecting to Phuket). Great flight but the triple 7 a little bit needing a refresh like their 787-9 which I understand is very good. But still a good, comfortable flight and the food was fine. But caviar on their Milano flight wow! Now that's a treat indeed for business class. Sign me up.
So you won’t fly Thai because you don’t want to fly Thai since you want to cancel the ticket anyway?
Sometimes plans change - you book something and think, hey, I'm in the cancelation window, no big deal, right?
Thai have a unique cancelation policy and took 25% of the total cost of 4 business seats from me when I canceled eight hours after making the reservation. So, like, whatever - Singapore/EVA/StarLUX get my cash now, and are better carriers regardless
Another entitlement issues.
I don't believe TG even have a 'free' cancelations policy. Especially they're not flying to USA anymore.
You have a blog, here, where the USA based blog owner talks about inconsistent policies between international airlines, including (what he sees as) punitive cancelation policies (for example most recently with Etihad).
I'm highlighting my own issue in a comment about TG where people might like other aspects of the airline but be caught out expecting a consistent 'free to cancel within 24hr' policy - one shared by most major international airlines.
They don't make it clear on their website and it's not easy to find the exact wording: boils down to ' free to cancel before midnight Thailand time day of booking' which in my case was around 4 hours after booking.
They're fine as a carrier - food and staff are good, planes are old and not competitive with the best. Their customer service is awful.
Personally, I won't fly them again - flying with a family things change and you'd expect to have some degree of assurance with an international class carrier - your milage may vary
"expecting a consistent 'free to cancel within 24hr' policy" ergo entitlement.
"They don't make it clear on their website" so you can't find their policy but assume it exists, ergo entitlement.
You may have had a bad experience with TG. But it's all from your entitlement issues.
And I'm not going into "punitive" since you obviously have entitlement issues and the topic will go nowhere with entitlement.
Nor am I aware TG has any 25% penalty on anything, it's always a fixed amount.
But it's your wallet in a free market. You can hate and avoid TG because T is the 20th alphabet. Your choice.
There is no BKK category restrictions.
You are probably referencing to IASA from FAA, which itself is not quite credible itself lately. But the autocrat can't downgrade itself. Just ask MAX.
But even without USA weaponizing FAA, they could have done better with other non US markets.
It's already wrong to even expect caviar.
You're more likely to literally get struck by lightning than wrong catering.
I thought it was a thing of the past but seems TG is still known for last minute equipment swaps. Mostly for the worse.
Ever tried contacting anyone in Thai airways other than bookings and reservations? Impossible! No email address on their website or phone number besides the booking. Phone number. Travel again in business class? No thanks!