Originally Posted by Romanianflyer

Just to report back on my own mileage run one-and-a-half months ago (IST-RUH-MNL-JED-IST) - it was not exactly a trip as great as I hoped for.

While I had pleasant experiences from last year's FCO-RUH-CGK flight, with the FCO-RUH flight operated on a comfortable A320 and the RUH-CGK flight on a 2-class B777 (with 2-2-2 lie-flat seating) it wasn't all that great on my recent run. Sure, IST-RUH and JED-IST were super comfortable on a 2-class A330 (2-2-2 layout) with lie-flat seats and good food. Those flights were both excellent with zero complaints whatsoever. The IGA lounge in Istanbul is also a very pleasant and quiet place to await your flight.

The RUH-MNL and JED-MNL flights were however operated by a much, much older B777 in a three-class configuration (with additional first class cabin). The business class seats (again 2-2-2 layout) in this plane are awful, as they are not fully flat but rather some slippery slope kind of seat. Food was also rather mediocre on these flights, especially on the MNL-JED flight where it was nearly inedible. The crew was great on the RUH-MNL flight but horrible again on the flight to JED (probably the - mostly Filipino - crew was not really looking forward to return to Saudi Arabia to work).

Don't forget to take a sweater on board as temperatures on the flights to MNL were put on subarctic temperatures and the blanket provided is flimsily thin. As a result I was sick for four days after completion of my MR. Bring a pillow perhaps as well as even with two pillows I still could not find a comfortable position to rest my head on those awful seats on the MNL flights. In hindsight, I should really have booked this to KUL (on the excellent B787 with 1-2-1 seating) even though it would have given me fewer XP and miles compared to MNL.