gvol21

Hi all,

Figured I'd post a quick recap of a flight I took several months ago from Amman to Zurich with Royal Jordanian business class. Wasn't originally planning on writing up a whole TR, but as I've been shamelessly browsing here for the last several months, I figured I ought to contribute in some small fashion, and this flight seemed like a good place to start. Due to the novelty of the flight (for me, at least), I ended up taking quite a few snaps. So here goes:

Background
I ended up taking off two weeks' vacation for this trip. The plan was to spend a long weekend in TLV thanks to the Air Canada sale of a lifetime (BOS-TLV for $150 RT), but when plans came up to visit some friends in Switzerland, I ended up throwing away my return ticket on AC and extended my trip in Israel and Jordan for a few days, before flying to ZRH and after a few more days on home to BOS on the direct LX flight. As luck would have it, RJ does the AMM-ZRH portion of the AMM-ZRH-GVA milk run direct on Saturdays, the day of the week I needed to fly. After deciding on the flight, I had to make an equally important decision: economy or business? With nearly 400k AA miles in the bank, I decided to splurge an extra 10k for a business class upgrade, and was I ever glad I did (more on this later).

The flight
27 Feb 2016
RJ 149
AMM-ZRH
4:15 inflight
A321-200 JY-AYT

Upon drop-off at the curb at AMM, I happened upon the separate Crown Class check-in area. Didn't take any pictures of it, but it was very nice - entered a separate, walled-off area exclusively for C pax, where my BP was printed, bag was checked, and passport stamped. Then it was off to the RJ lounge:



Apologies for not snapping better pictures of the lounge or the food; next time I feel like taking a bunch of photos I’ll do so with an eye towards writing a FT TR

A bunch of tasty olives (they weren’t serving olive pits!), hummus, and the chickpeas behind went with the tasty Jordanian foul (not pictured). I’m a big fan of Arabic breakfasts. Lounge was busy for a Saturday morning but not crowded.



Left with plenty of time to spare - too much time, as it turns out. The gate for Zurich was in a semi-satellite terminal with nothing more than some basic seating and poor air conditioning. A delayed departure wasn’t helping things much, either. After some time boarding was finally called:



Flight attendants were friendly, and immediately took my jacket for storage before offering some menus and Arabic coffee. After years of Eurobiz on LH and LX, I enjoyed the true business class seats, which were spaciously arranged in a 2-2 configuration:




I had assigned myself 3C, but after it became clear that 3A would remain otherwise unoccupied I shifted over to enjoy the view from the window.

Whilst settling in and reviewing the menu and wine list, more buses pulled up to the airstairs with the Y pax. At this point, we were at least an hour delayed, and the purser came up to each business class passenger to personally apologize for the delay, explaining that they were holding the flight for a large group of pilgrims on their way back to Europe from somewhere in Iraq, and their inbound to AMM had been delayed. As they filed through business on the way back to economy, I was struck with the impression that many of them hadn’t showered recently… With boarding complete, I looked back into the very full Y cabin and was doubly thankful I had splurged the extra 10k miles on a business class seat!

AMM seemed to be the Tristar capital of the world! Spotted out of the window when taxiing for takeoff:




Service continued after takeoff with some drinks; I opted in for a boring cup of tea, which was served with tasty pistachios and nuts.





Mains were served off a trolley in the aisle and plated by the flight attendant. Shame I didn’t take a picture, but I had a little of each, and it was tasty. I even upended my prohibition on eating airplane shellfish & seafood, and ate the shrimp. Also good!

The highlight for me, though, was the Arabic ice cream served for dessert. Never seen an ice cream “roll” like this before, but it was very rich and delicious.



The rest of the flight went by quickly. Service was superlative, and a solid hard product made this flight stand out in my mind. All too soon, we were descending over the Alps for a bumpy yet scenic approach to Zurich.



The verdict

I was quite impressed with RJ Crown Class. Having flown LH/LX numerous times on flights of a similar length, having a proper business class seat was a great differentiator. Superb service and good food helped, too! Would recommend, especially for those making award bookings and trying to decide between business and economy.

offerendum

The ice cream looks indeed impressive^ Now I´m hungry, thanks

DanielW

Cool to see a flight from AMM, and on RJ. That Tristar graveyard looks very interesting too.

Madone59

Thanks for sharing. RJ is definitely one we don't get to see a lot.

757

Thank you for sharing this report!

It looks like you had a nice flight with RJ in Crown Class. I love the crown logo appearing on almost everything. I think RJ must have one of my most beautiful liveries in the skies.

Taoyuan

Looks like an awesome dessert.

ABax

Thanks for this report! I find the food on RJ to be consistently good, at least on the longer-haul sectors. In fact, I had that very dessert on AMM-LHR in December, and it was delicious - sadly there wasn't any left for me to indulge in seconds!

injian

*Drool* over the ice cream

nequine

Yes it looked very tempting!

bsagator

To be specific, that is "Syrian" ice cream. You can find the recipe with a simple google search. You had a Syrian pistachio ice cream roll.




What did you think of AMM? I thought their newish airport was quite nice. I really liked the design of the terminal.

gvol21

I stand corrected... Syrian ice cream. Menu reads "Arabic ice cream", so was going off of that. Very tasty/

And AMM was spacious and modern, if you can manage to avoid those nasty 'overflow' gates...

Rami Tamimi

You boarder thru gate 116,which is a temporary concourse that contains 5 bus gates (116A/B/C/D/E). This is a temporary concourse,which will be demolished when the new pier with more gates will be open. The building works have been completed,but it will only be oficially opened by the end of the month. When that happens Gate 116 will become a proper gate (you may have seen a jetbridge,which is not currently in use because it's blocked by the temporary concourse). They board most of my DME flights from that concourse,which I am fed up of

Thanks for the TR and the pictures,glad you enjoyed the flight.

gvol21

Thanks for info on the gates, good to know. Had I planned on writing up a TR I would have paid more attention to such things. Apart from the temporary concourse, AMM was fantastic, as was the city and the country, too. Would love another opportunity to return to Jordan!