Our departing flight out of Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport, we flew British Airways Club Europe Business Class. Business class in Europe is typically never too luxurious, it does typically offer priority services which include priority security, lounge access, priority boarding, a full meal service, and the ability to get off the plane first upon arrival. We would experience all of these features on our flight into London Heathrow international airport, as we connected onwards to our British Airways long haul transatlantic flight.

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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.

If you enjoyed this post, please follow us here or on social media through Facebook, Twitter “X” or Instagram for more travel tips and hacks on how to “Upgrade Your Travels”.

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Review: British Airways Club Europe Business Class, Airbus 319-1, Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport – London Heathrow Terminal Five

This flight segment was part of our trip home, travelling from Europe to North America. The two segments involved British Airways Club Europe Nice – London Heathrow (this review), and our long-haul segment British Airways Club Suites Business Class London Heathrow – Vancouver international Airport.

Checking in with British Airways:

We checked in with British Airways at Nice Côte d’Azur international airport. As previously mentioned the check-in was pleasant, if not functional. Our bags were checked all the way through to Vancouver.

After passing through security, we located The Canopy VIP Lounge, which was included with our British Airways Club Europe Business Class ticket. I outlined our stay at The Canopy VIP Lounge in a separate post, so I won’t go into detail about it here. Needless to say, The Canopy VIP Lounge was a pleasant and spacious place to relax before our flight.

After spending about one hour in The Canopy VIP Lounge, we headed down towards the departure gate. Our flight to London Heathrow was departing from gate B41. In regular British Airways fashion, a priority boarding lane for Club Europe Business Class Travellers, British Airways Executive Club Gold, Silver and Bronze Members, along with One World Emerald, Sapphire and Ruby members, were given priority boarding.

This was a nice touch, but it made the boarding process quite long given the large number of travelling members in this category.

British Airways
BA 343 – Business Class (D)
LHR – NCE (– Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport – London Heathrow Terminal 5)
Oct 15, 2023
11:30 AM – 12:40 PM
Booked: Airbus 319-1
Flown: Airbus 319-1

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 middle seat in the British Airways Club Europe cabin is typically blocked with a small fixed table. The space can easily be used for drinks, charging of devices, or storing your laptop computer throughout dinner service.

The seat room in the British Airways Club Europe cabin is not super generous. The recline features offers a 30° pitch, versus a 29° pitch in economy class; a marginally better offering. As you can see, the leg room is not all too spacious and my tall frame generally uses all the available space.

The British Airways Airbus 319 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 features in seat power. The Empower port is located under the seat in a rather inconvenient location. The power port offered both plug in and USB A charging.

The British Airways Club Europe cabin on an Airbus 319 offers a large ten rows of business class, or a cabin of forty standard Club Europe seats. As stated, the seats offer almost same pitch and width of the economy class seats. There may be a marginally larger amount of leg room as compared to economy class, but it’s not likely to be noticed all too much.

Pre – Departure Services:

As a result of the large number of people in the priority boarding group, by the time we got on board, most of the overhead bin space was already consumed.

British Airways didn’t offer a pre-departure service. As a result, we didn’t get a refreshing drink to start our journey.

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. The price points were similar from our outbound British Airways Club Europe London – Nice flights.

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.

Departing Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport:

Once we were all on board, we had a very quick departure from the Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport on runway Four.

Since I was seated on the left hand side of the aircraft I had a fabulous view of private jets parked on the Airport apron, in addition to a spectacular coastline view as we climbed altitude out of the coastal city of Nice.

After takeoff, our flight track had us turning north – westbound towards the United Kingdom. During the flight I spent quite a bit of time staring out the window, watching the French Alps pass underneath the plane below us.

The mountains were quite different than the pacific northwest coastal Mountain so that I’m used to seeing.

The Meal: A Light Lunch

British Airways Club Europe Business Class service typically offers a full meal presented all at once. Today’s light lunch was a chicken with gravy served with a potato dauphinoise. An alternate choice was a cold beef salad or mushroom pasta.

I ended up enjoying the chicken with gravy. It was a great meal and exceptionally flavorful. Despite my best efforts, light gravy is something that’s difficult to consume on a plane in a neat fashion. I ended up getting gravy droppings on my shirt, which I would take with me home on my trans Atlantic flight.

I paired my lunch with Schweppes Tonic Water and Tanqueray Gin. The Schweppes had one of the remaining Queen Elizabeth II royal warrants on the can; some thing that will probably disappear overtime as a result of her passing earlier this year.

Mrs. World Traveller 73 enjoyed the vegetarian mushroom pasta. It was a little elementary in its appearance, but it served the trick.

I ended up ordering a union coffee for dessert. Despite British Airways having an extensive marketing partnership with Union Coffee, by serving union coffee both on board it’s aircraft and throughout its British Airways Lounge network, the coffee itself was pretty pedestrian and not very exciting.

Overall, the British Airways Club Europe service was a pretty pleasant way to pass the flight. The food was tasty and enjoyable.

Arriving to London Heathrow International Airport:

As our flight continued on, we had a straight in arrival towards London Heathrow International airport. We had pleasant views of British row housing as we descended into London Heathrow.

The views of the British Airways hangars at London Heathrow always fascinate me. There are always British Airways Airbus 380’s hanging around, along with other interesting aircraft.

We arrived to a non-gate position. Since we were seated in row two, we are among the first off the aircraft. We boarded the first available bus, and headed straight over to catch our connection in London Heathrow terminal three.

We arrived into London Heathrow Terminal Five and located our connection terminal. British Airways operates a few select international departures out of London Heathrow Terminal Three, which can occasionally make for a confusing departure terminal scenario if you haven’t done your advanced reserach.

We found our connecting terminal and made our way over to the American Express Centurion Lounge London Heathrow Terminal Three, and the British Airways Galleries Lounge London Heathrow Terminal Three, prior to our British Airways Club Suites Business Class London Heathrow – Vancouver flight.

My Thoughts on British Airways Club Europe:

The British Airways Club Europe flight from Nice to London Heathrow to Paris offered a more comfortable way to travel than economy class. Despite the configuration being a little cramped, the food on board was pleasant. Priority boarding, lounge access and the ability to get off the plane first, added to the experience.

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

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