Originally Posted by
anonymous_third_party
Out of interest, which other european airlines offer a better product than CE?
Hard product for short haul wise, the old MA (RIP) used to have 'proper' business class seats. Currently Tarom is the main one I can think of - most people haven't heard of Tarom, being SkyTeam, but it's a Romanian carrier.
All the major European carriers I can think of right now use the same seating for business class, except for blocked and compressed middle seat.
I used to think LH, LX and OS J had superior catering to BA (speaking of short haul only here), but since BA's catering improved, particularly for hot meals, I think the hierarchy is probably like this:
Short short haul with cold meals: LH = LX = OS = BA or possibly OS being a bit better than the rest
Longer short haul with hot meals: BA > LX > LH (can't comment on OS as I have only had cold meals)
With one big proviso - LX serve orange juice that isn't from the concentrate on breakfast flights and I am rather fond of that.
Just my personal opinion based on my own exposure to the carriers.
What tends to happen is that a lot of people from outside of Europe get a surprise when there is no "big difference in seats" but let's face it, that's the norm in the European short haul market.
Funnily enough I liked the Y catering on AF when I had to fly with them.