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I flew with the new Gulf Air Boeing 787-9 from Bahrain to London recently. With the introduction of the new B787, Gulf Air introduced a new corporate branding and new uniforms.
Gulf Air New B787-9 has 26 Business Class seats and 256 Economy Class seats. The 787-9 is currently deployed on All London service (twice daily), as well as Casablanca and Bangkok soon.
Seating
Falcon Gold Business Class boasts one of the longest flat bed in the world with all direct aisle access and forward facing seats. I would recommend the window seat as it gives you extra privacy with high screens with your own passage in and out of the seat. The middle seats are perfect for traveling pairs though the window and aisle seats on the side can also worked out as a good choice. All seats have privacy screen that can be elevated to create more privacy. Overall, I think this is one of the best Business Class seat out there.
The Economy class features a standard 3-3-3 seating configuration. The seat pitch is quite generous and the seat can recline deeply which is an advantage.
I flew in from Dubai on a Gulf Air A320neo in the morning to connect on to Gulf Air 787 flight to London. Flying time to London was 6 hours 30 minutes. My connection time in Bahrain was 2 hours.
I had a glass of the refreshing lemon & mint juice and enjoyed some toasted nuts after take-off. Gulf Air also serves alcohol on-board. The champagne was Jacquart Brut.
In-Flight Service
Gulf Air has a chef on-board in Business Class to look after the passengers. On my flight chef Nizar is in charge of the food and drink suggestion, platting and delivering the food. The table was set up individually without the use of tray.
For starters, I was offered a choice of Arabic Mezze, garden salad or mushroom soup.
Then, there were 4 choices of main course include lamp chop, sweet and sour chicken, red snapper or linguini pasta.
A dessert trolley with strawberry cheesecake, lemon pie and opera cake was rolled out after the main course, among fruit and cheese.
After lunch, it is time for a quick nap. Gulf Air offers a turned down service with seat cover and warm comforter. They also offer pyjamas for overnight flight.
Shortly before landing into London, afternoon tea was served with choices of English scone, lamingtons and sandwiches.
My Thoughts
I must say my Gulf Air flight was excellent in both hard and soft products. The seat is one of the most private and can convert into a very long bed. I particularly liked the fact it was forward facing instead of side or rear facing. The crew were excellent in looking after all passengers, the crew to passengers ratio was 4 to 26 in Business Class which is generous!
The only downside to my flight is that there was no Wi-Fi installed yet. The entertainment options were also somewhat limited compared to other airlines.
Gulf Air gave me the impression as a quality boutique regional carrier. I was very impressed with the quality they provided and would certainly recommend to travel with them in their network.
At the end of my flight, the crew surprised me with a large card of my face printed! Check out the video below!
Interesting review of my adopted countries airline. I would love to hear your experience on the Gulf Air flight from Dubai to Bahrain. I have often found Gulf Air regional services to be very poor, bordering on sub low cost. Their aircraft are old and showing signs of much needed upgrade or replacement. Being a regular business traveller between the Bahrain and Dubai I have often found myself ill after arrival, at either location, the only reason I can think of is that the Air conditioning system on the plane is not maintained/serviced or cleaned regularly.
Thank you Sam for your review, I continue to enjoy them.
The hard product looks pretty good and the service amazing. I think that’s important as if you have a hard product which might not be so good, maybe it’s a bit older, that can be an expensive thing to put right but good service can be used on any flight making the experience much better.
I fly a couple of times a year between the UK for work and to see my family and Thailand where I’m married but I usually fly economy. My wife has been suffering from a bad back so when we decided we should both visit the UK I decided business class was the best option and I found a cheap business class fare with Gulf Air and I was looking forward to our 21:30 flight from Bangkok on 26 Apr. Unfortunately the day before we received news that my wife’s sister had had a stroke and was in hospital in Bangkok so we flew straight down but with our bags for our UK trip. By the morning of the 26th we decided that we would have to cancel or trip. Being cheap tickets I knew the refund possibilities would be slim but at least my wife’s rigger was covered by insurance. My first contact was with the Bahrain office as it was Sunday and then later with Bangkok. Both gave me different options of rebooking before May next year or December this year with differing fees. There’s no mention of fares class (J, C ect) and I can’t find specific fare rules on their site but I’ll have another look in case I’ve missed it. The guy in Bangkok wouldn’t tell me the fare class and seemed to get a bit angry that I wanted it. I’ve emailed customer care twice since 7 September and received 1 automated reply but nothing else.
It looks as if the on ground staff could take some valuable lessons from the in flight ones.
Thanks for sharing your concern. Change fee varies may be due to different seat inventories. I hope you have sorted out the problem.