I have just booked, for reasons that I will explain in a few weeks, a one-way flight from the US to Germany.
- airberlin
- New York JFK to Berlin Tegel
- One-Way
- Business Class
The Avios required were the expected 40,000 for a one-way in Business.
And the taxes ……?
(Scroll down!)
£1.50
Not bad for a business class flight across the Atlantic!
I will be sitting / sleeping in one of these, which is not the greatest by a long way:
…. but I need to be in that corner of Germany first thing in the morning and I can’t get a miles seat on the United flight to Hamburg. And, frankly, for £1.50 in taxes I can live with it!
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About Head for Points
Unless you are travelling very soon, you might even be lucky to catch one of the ungraded Business Class cabins. I imagine that after Abu Dhabi, New York will be one of the first routes to see it rolled out.
6 weeks, so unlikely, sadly! I have a post on the new seat lined up for a few days time.
It’s still better than economy!
Hi Raffles,
Two things:
1) I just came back from an excellent holiday in Dubai. Thanks to your blog I flew Air Berlin from Berlin to Abu Dhabi for 50k miles in C and £48 in taxes. Amazing bargain of a redemption and would not have known about it without you so thanks.
2) The Air Berlin business seats are not the ones you show in picture. From flyertalk research I think they replaced all those recliner seats early in 2012 with angled lie flat seats which are ex. Swiss I think. I foudn them quite comfortable to sleep in. As someone else said they are again replacing these with Etihad business seats later this year, so they will have replaced their C seats twice in a 12 month period.
Otherwise the Air Berlin business product is fairly mediocre, they have a lot of the ingredients of a good product, food is good, IFE decent, seat comfortable, nice amenity kit but for some reason it just feels a bit lacklustre compared to BA or LX. Still pleasant enough and as I say I slept very well in their seat.
I think you’re right. This video http://www.airberlin.com/site/landingpages/new_business_class_seats.php?LANG=eng shows the current AB seat, and when I look closely it is a bit different (but not hugely!) from the photo I put up.
Yeah its not much of a difference, it has plugs and lights in between the two seats and the seat covering is felt, rather than faux leather but its not a massive improvement. Hopefully you will get lucky and get the new Etihad seats.
The AB new biz class seat has aisle access from every seat, For me this is becoming a sine qua non. And of course, 50% are window seats.
Eight across seating with only 50% having aisle access, as with the majority of seats in BA Club World, is a disgrace IMO. Of course, 62AK and 64AK on the Upper Deck are great, and somehow I usually manage to end up there. But 8-across including the foursome in the middle – no thanks.
AB’s website shows new seating on the A330 on the DUS-LAX and DUS-AUH routes. When the’ve installed a few more, I’ll be looking for some Avios redemptions.