20 reviews
Hello, long time viewer and first time poster.
In this trip report, we will share our trip on Bamboo airways long haul flight from Australia to Asia. This trip to South East Asia took place during Christmas/NY break. While looking for our options to get there, we realised that Air Canada signed up Bamboo as their partner and we found some last minute reward seats on SYD-SGN (Christmas eve reward seat!)
To start with, Bamboo don't let you do seat selection online on Aeroplan bookings. And, it is not possible to do online check in on international flights. Flight was delayed by 2 hours due to the late arrival of the aircraft into Sydney. This is looking like a patchy start.
We got to the check in counter 3 hours before the scheduled time (5 hours before the departure time) to try and get seat selection done. They have a separate priority line for business and their elite guests, which was good and enforced. The flight was full as expected and the system assigned us to random middle seats. Note: Bamboo gives a generous 65kg!!! of checked baggage each in business class to/from Australia and Europe.
The lounge used in Sydney in Plaza premium which is actually the Skyteam lounge and it was pretty cool.
The lounge food was not that great. They were about to change from breakfast to lunch, so not quite the ideal time to visit. The lounge is pretty good for plane spotting.
Next up is boarding time and here is a look at the Bamboo 787. It is their first 787 and named "Halong Bay"
Out of the 3 787s that Bamboo has, two are ex-Hainan and this is also one of them. Seat is a reverse herringbone configuration.
There is a smaller storage on the left with the essential ports and TV remote and a bigger storage on the right (also serves as arm rest).
Some pictures of the seat.
Entertainment screen is decent and touch screen or control via remote, but content is very limited. You might want to bring you own.
The headphones provided were poor, no NC.
No WIFI on this aircraft either. I don't think actually any of their aircraft has WIFI
Menus are digital and shown by the crew on a tablet. Not big on alcohol, but I realised they only had 2 whites and 2 reds.
Some pictures of the food. They really like their branding.
Second meal service
No fancy brands, but lots of useful stuff in the distinctly branded amenity kit
Overall, pretty good considering everything including the cost and the nature of the trip. The crew were attentive and excellent.
Some points to note.
1. They wouldnt let us pre-select seats on Aeroplan bookings. I notice the option when booking a flight on their website, but once we booked ours through Aeroplan it was not possible.
2. It is not possible to do internet checking (and select seats) for international bookings.
3. They has only 3 787-9s in their fleet and they fly long haul to several cities, so it is a bit of a tight operation and our flight was delayed by 2.5 hours due to late arrival of the aircraft from FRA.
6 Comments
Too bad Bamboo don’t allow advanced seat selection on other airline rewards and it’s really a shame that they don’t have online checkin for international flights! That would cause me a lot of unnecessary anxiety! Like most travel/aviation geeks I like to be in control haha.
Aside from that, and the delay, everything else looks fantastic! Not too surprised about the limited content on the IFE. That seems to be a trend since Covid. It’s been one of the easier ways for airlines to cut costs without too much impact to overall experience. Heck, Qantas turned off IFE altogether for over a year and a half during the pandemic. Hopefully things will go back to normal once things rebound more, since Asia is the last zone to be opening back up.
The food looks really good! I’ve half Vietnamese so I’m biased haha.
Again, welcome and looking forward to future reviews! Obviously you guys are seasoned trip reviewers based on the quality of this review and the very nice videos!
Yes, definitely pretty good and going for the VIetnamese food choices were no brainer on this one. We will continue to add more although some of them will be a bit of a throwback. Actually, we have just started doing the videos since mid last year, so we are quite fresh and receptive to feedback to improve :)
Very interesting first report.
You forgot apetizer page on your menu.
Bamboo try to compets directly VN on this direct route !
Have a nice year !
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