Comparing British Airways Club Europe & Euro Traveller Experiences

July 26, 2016

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This review forms part a trip I took with Joanna to Las Vegas and San Francisco (introduction and full details of the trip are here).

British Airways Airbus A319 – The Cabins

The Euro Traveller cabin in a British Airways A319 is set up in a 6-across configuration with 3 seats either side of a central aisle:

British Airways Airbus A319 – Euro traveller Cabin

If you’re not familiar with British Airways you may be surprised to hear that the Club Europe (business Class) cabin is laid out in exactly the same way…..

British Airways Airbus A319 – Club Europe seating

….although, as you can see from the picture above, the airline blocks the middle seat so you only get passengers in the window and aisle seats.

The seats themselves are exactly the same in both cabins – slimline and quite hard.

Another similarity between the two cabins is the amount of leg room that passengers get.

Row 1 in the Club Europe cabin looks to have a reasonable amount of leg room…..

British Airways Airbus A319 – Club Europe Row 1

….but, apart from that, the leg room in Club Europe appears to be the same as the leg room that passengers get in the Euro Traveller cabin.

Euro Traveller leg room:

Club Europe leg room:

So for all the extra money that you pay for sitting up front (and it can be a lot more) you get no leg room advantage over those sitting in the “cheap seats”.

It gets worse.

Joanna and I were seated in the exit row for our flight in the Euro Traveller cabin and I took the opportunity to compare the leg room I had there to the leg room I had in row 2 of the Club Europe cabin.

Club Europe leg room:

Euro Traveller exit row leg room:

I did my best to take the photos from as similar an angle as possible and with my feet in roughly the same position in both cases…and you can see the result. The extra space I had in the Euro Traveller exit row was considerable and could make quite a bit of difference to someone of size (I’m around 6ft tall ).

British Airways Short Haul Food

Two of the things that have aways impressed me about British Airways are:

The airline has always offered some sort of complimentary food in Euro Traveller…even on very short flights.
The cabin crew always get through the food & drink service in Euro Traveller even when time is clearly against them.

That being said, while the service can be impressive, the food is often less so:

British Airways Euro Traveller meal – Smoked ham and soft cheese croissant

But it’s still more than you get on a lot (most) airlines.

The offering in Club Europe was more substantial but still not exactly impressive….

British Airways Club Europe meal

…although I could be being a little bit harsh here considering this was only an hour-long flight.

Neither Joanna or I were in the mood for anything alcoholic on either of our flights so we didn’t get to compare the selections…although I did see some champagne being poured in the Club Europe cabin which I’m pretty sure wouldn’t be available in the back!

One thing that you get in both cabins is a good cup of tea…although in Club Europe you get a proper cup as opposed to a paper one.

Service

In Club Europe the ratio of cabin crew to passengers is so much better than in Euro Traveller that it’s unfair to do a comparison. Yes, the service on our Club Europe flight was attentive….but then the service on the Euro Traveller flight was as attentive as it could have been considering the number of passengers the flight attendants had to serve.

I can’t complain about the service up front but I was more impressed by the way the crew in Euro Traveller carried out all their duties in the short time they had.

Bottom Line

You get more attentive service and better food/drink in Club Europe and you get a bit more shoulder space thanks to the blocked center seat…but that’s about it.

We were in Club Europe because that’s the cabin you get when you book a long-haul trip in First or Business Class with a short-haul connection thrown in….but I have no idea why anyone would pay to sit in Club Europe otherwise.

As it happens Joanna and I had an empty middle seat in our Euro Traveller exit row but, even without that, the exit row seats would be just as desirable (if not more so) than any seat in Club Europe and only row 1 looked any better than the regular Euro Traveller seats.

I guess that, for people with wide shoulders or a bit more girth, the blocked middle seat in Club Europe may be a bonus but, for most travellers, I can’t see the point in paying the premium to sit up front. Champagne aside it’s a very ordinary experience.