On our trip to Nice, France, we flew British Airways and connected through London Heathrow airport. After a comfortable wide body flight in British Airways Club Suite Business Class product, it was time to enjoy their narrow body intra Europe option of British Airways Club Europe. In a continent where airlines are trying to compete against more convenient trains, you might think that air carriers might be trying to make business class more upscale. Business Class in Europe is never very exciting and British Airways wasn’t much exception to this. Read on to see what our connecting British Airways Club Europe flight was like.

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This post is one chapter on a trip to the South of France and Cinque Terre, Italy. This trip was enhanced through Marriott Bonvoy Elite Status and Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. For information on how this trip was booked, please see our introduction. For parts of the trip, please see this index.

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Review: British Airways Club Europe Business Class, Airbus 321-2, London Heathrow Terminal Five – Nice Côte d’Azur Airport

After arriving into London Heathrow on British Airways Club Suites Business Class Vancouver – London and spending a little time at the British Airways Galleries South Lounge, we headed off to locate our connecting flight of British Airways Club Europe London Heathrow – Nice.

London Heathrow doesn’t publish the departure gate until about one hour before the scheduled flight departure, resulting in a bit of a scramble out to your departing gate. It’s a strange system, but it seems to work for them.

Our flight was published to depart from Heathrow’s Terminal 5 Gate B39. As a result, we took the basement train out to the second Heathrow concourse, in order to locate the gate.

Our aircraft was delayed coming in from Corfu, Greece. As a result, we had a small flight delay. There was a bit of a confused (but more likely apathetic) boarding process by the Heathrow ground staff, but we eventually got on board our Airbus 321 that was taking us to Nice, France this evening.

British Airways
BA 356 – Business Class (D)
LHR – NCE (London Heathrow Terminal 5 – Nice Côte d’Azur)
Oct 1, 2023
1:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Booked: Airbus 321-2
Flown: Airbus 321-2

On Board British Airways Club Europe:

On board, we found our seats in 2A / 2C. The British Airways Club Europe is the typical economy class seat in a 3 – 3 configuration with a blocked middle seat.

The British Airways Airbus 321-2 series aircraft offers individual air nozzles, which make for a more comfortable ride.

I’m still baffled as to how European airlines manage to survive with selling business class travel into economy class seats for flights lasting up to three quarters of an hour or more.

The British Airways Club Europe cabin does feature in seat power. The Empower port is located under the seat in a rather inconvenient location. The power poert offered both plug in and USB A charging.

The British Airways Club Europe cabin on an Airbus 321-2 offers a large fourteen rows of business class, or a cabin of fifty four standard Club Europe seats. The seats offer the same pitch and width of the economy class seats. Although the seats offer a little more leg room than the standard economy class seat.

Pre – Departure Services:

British Airways didn’t offer a pre-departure beverage service.

Instead, we had a pilot announcement indicating that pilots would do their best to make up for lost time.

During the time while we settled in, I took a browse through the menu. British Airways doesn’t always provide a printed menu for Club Europe (for flights within continental Europe) and I was hoping to get an idea of what was being served. I found a heap of breakfast, lunch and dinner items.

British Airways also offered a pretty comprensive drink menu. Despite browsing through it, I wasn’t able to locate any information on what we might be enjoying up front.

In Flight Entertainment:

With no monitors in the seat backs in the cabin, in flight entertainment is limited to whatever you brought with you on your own smartphone.

Our aircraft was also BA.air enabled, allowing us to connect to wifi. While I didn’t test this out to see how the streaming opportunities were, this is likely your only other audio video entertainment option if you didn’t get organized enough to bring content on your device.

The wifi price on the shorter flight was more reasonable than on the international flight. Despite the better price, i didn’t test out the streaming services.

The Meal: A Light Dinner

The service was a bit slow to start on this particular flight. Service started about forty five minutes into the flight, for a flight that was only one hour and a half in length.

The dinner options today were a chicken with a lobster pasta sauce or a vegetarian curry dinner. I went with the chicken and it was pretty tasty for a regional flight.

Dinner was served with an individual bottle of red wine with a choice of Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvingon. I went with the Shiraz, which was reasonable but unmemorable.

Overall, the British Airways Club Europe service was a reasonable and comfortable flight that was complimented by fairly good catering and drinks that were tasty and cold.

Arriving to Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport:

We arrived into Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport. On arrival, we parked next to an El Al Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

Once we arrived into the arrivals hall, we proceeded through immigration. I was stamped into the European Union, with probably among my final EU passport stamps.

It took a long time for the baggage to be put out for collection. It was almost 30 minutes wait before we were able to collect them.

My Thoughts on British Airways Club Europe:

The British Airways Club Europe flight from London Heathrow to Paris offered a more comfortable way to travel. While the service contained a proper meal, it was still a little cramped and missing of most of the features like a larger seat that make business class more comfortable. Despite this, I wouldn’t hesitate to fly British Airways Club Europe again in the future.

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If you have flown British Airways between France and London, do you regularly spring for Club Europe Business Class?

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