don’t worry it’s not you. BA is yet to update aircraft types to the A350 after March 29th 2020 (on all A350 routes). The update should come soon

G-XWBB currently on its first flight

I got to try WT and the Club Suite last night. Overall, a positive experience and an interesting sign of things to come.

World Traveller
The cabin, at first glance, is spacious and bright. The white cabin with blue seats are pleasing to look at and make it feel roomier than it actually is. The seats are small, there’s absolutely no denying it. If you’ve got more than a 36” waist, you may struggle. While comfy looking, I could feel the underside of the seat on my backside after 90mins.

The upside is that the legroom is among the best of any long haul offering around. Under seat storage is lacking, you can get small to medium size rucksacks under there, but that is it. Luckily, the overhead bins are roomy.

I was in 35A, which only has a window very far forward. You do need to lean ahead to properly see out. The seats in row 35 don’t recline, as they’re ahead of a bulkhead. Below the seat, you’ve got two universal sockets between the three seats in addition to the USB port on the IFE.

Speaking of the IFE, it’s pretty decent - there’s the usual decent selection, and the screen is bright and responsive. I didn’t use it much, but the homepage is useful - it shows your speed, altitude, distance travelled, time to destination and whether WiFi is available.

Club suite
This is a revelation, really. Seats that face forward and point at the window, surely not from BA? There’s plenty of storage around the seat, my only complaint is that these are quite shallow and need to be secured for taxi, take off and landing. Leg room is superior to the current Club offering, and you can also store a bag (and a fair sized one at that) below your footrest at all stages of flight. Annoyingly, there’s a cubby hole for a water bottle beside your seat that has to be empty for taxi, take of and landing.

The seat itself is exceptionally comfortable and intuitive to use. It looks the part, with plenty of attention to detail in the design. The seatbelt is a three-point affair, but the shoulder strap is only needed when the seatbelt signs are on - it’s not hugely clear how to attach or detach this part at first.

The IFE screen is pretty damn big, and comes with a controller in one of the cubby holes. You can use the controller for games (it even has XYAB buttons) and watch the moving map on while enjoying a show or movie on the larger screen.

WiFi
It’s not ideal and symptomatic of IAG’s desire to eke every last penny out of everything possible. You can’t pay for time or speed anymore, only data. 50mb is £4.99, 75mb is £11.99, 150mb is £17.99.

On my outward flight, the 150mb lasted the entire journey. On the way back, I chanced it with the 75mb and ran out after 45mins. I purchased another 75mb which bizarrely ran out after only 10mins and next to no browsing, I tried again and the same thing happened - this was despite all background app refreshes disabled and data-intensive apps being closed. I’ll be submitting a refund request for these.

In terms of speed, it was pretty reasonable. It was clear my speeds were being throttled at points, with even images on Twitter struggling to load occasionally. Videos were watchable, but took dial-up lengths of time to load.

i might be overthinking it. But BA has change the number in fleet of the A350 from “1(17 on order)” to “currently being rolled out in fleet (17 by 2022)” I feel like this is a sign that they’re taking on more A350s. I don’t know. Hopefully!

Is that from the website? It might be more to do with not wanting to update the information each time another aircraft is delivered. Not that that should be too onerous a task!

I figured! But that’s how they usually just update it as more come. But still hoping!

Twitter

Yes, booked MAD-LHR early October in the Club suite :-)

probably CAF next week