Review of Thai Airways flight from Kolkata to Bangkok in Business

Background

After getting back from Australia I'd spent a lot of time looking for possible trips, for everywhere from New Caledonia to Morocco, Belarus to Cambodia, and Uganda to Kazakhstan (other than a short domestic trip in India none of those happened). Eventually it looked like a Christmas time trip to London would be the most likely, taking a Lufthansa 747 from Bangalore one way and Saudia on the way back, but that didn't work out either.
Finally, what did work was a Middle Eastern trip. This was inspired by a desire to visit Kuwait (you might be able to guess why… it had very little to do with Kuwait and more with a certain aircraft in the KU fleet), and what might be the best flight deal I've ever seen.
So, for some inexplicable reason, Kolkata-Bangkok-Amman on Thai Airways International and Royal Jordanian, when booked on one ticket on certain sites, is standardly priced at just $199. Yes, more than 12 hours of flights time on full service carriers, for $199 (the routing isn't available on the website of either airline, and booking CCU-BKK on TG and BKK-AMM on RJ as separate tickets usually comes to $800-900).
On the day that worked for this particular trip, however, that fare wasn't available. What was available was an even better deal, which is shown below (the price there is $390, it was actually $367 a few days earlier when it was booked).

Just in case you didn't notice it, that $390 fare is for business.
When booked separately on the airline websites….

…the total comes to a little over $2.6k. So the actual price paid is just under 86% off.
Not bad at all! It would be an incredibly reasonable price even for economy, less than half the price of booking separate economy tickets, and for business class with lie-flat seats on 787s…
(Interestingly enough, my last flight on this route (on Bhutan Airlines) also ended up being in business, without having to pay the business price)

This flight would also earn me 1,270 miles with United.

The whole trip:

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Airport

I haven't flown out of CCU at night since December last year, on IndiGo to Singapore on the way to Perth. Most of my recent flights were during the day.
There are lots of Christmas lights outside the airport (and generally in Kolkata).

CCU is apparently celebrating 100 years of service. Although as far as I can tell the airport did have flights prior to 1924, that was the year that KLM began flying to Calcutta on the way from Amsterdam to Batavia.

Economy check-in had a long line but there was no wait at all for Royal Silk check-in.

Check-in staff were all from Air India Ground Services.
Bags were checked through to Amman, although boarding passes would have to be collected in Bangkok.
A look at some of the international departures, including the newly-launched Malaysia Airlines service from Kuala Lumpur:

During the night, Bangkok replaces Dhaka as the most dominant international destination from Kolkata.
There were long lines at immigration and security as this is the busiest time for international flights out of CCU, but it was still fairly early for the flight and after clearing everything there was about an hour left until boarding.

Travel Club Lounge

There was lounge access for this flight. The international lounge at CCU has two levels, the top is for business (and technically first, although there is no first class on any of the flights to CCU) passengers and the bottom for everyone else that gets access (by paying or with membership or whatever).

For some reason Air India is mentioned on this sign, despite not flying internationally from CCU, as well as Batik, despite not flying to CCU at all anymore, and IndiGo, despite not having business class out of CCU (at least internationally).

The lounge is really nothing special, at least it was fairly quiet (although it filled up over the hour I was there).

You can look down at the check-in area.

A look at the food available at the lounge, it's basically all Indian options.

I got a couple of little pastry cakes and a mango drink.

I had a look at our aircraft on flightradar. I had expected it to be HS-TQF, coming from Taipei (via Bangkok of course) but that went to Chennai and we got HS-TQB which had been in Phuket before returning to Bangkok and then operating TG313 BKK-CCU.
I ordered a kulcha and paneer, which I didn't really need to eat since I wasn't that hungry, it was midnight, and there would be a meal on the flight, but anyway…

It was decent, nothing amazing but better than anything you can buy in the CCU food court.

Aircraft & Boarding

After around an hour in the lounge it was time to head down to the gate. Our aircraft had arrived from Bangkok. Today's flight would be operated by the Boeing 787-8 HS-TQB named จตุรพักตรพิมาน (Chaturaphak Phiman), 10.3 years old and a part of Thai's fleet for its whole history. Thai used to fly ex-Thai Smile A320s to CCU for a long time, only switching to Dreamliners recently.

Next to our plane was 9M-VAA, an AirAsia A321neo in the 3, 2, 1, take off special livery, preparing for its flight back home to Kuala Lumpur.

Boarding was delayed by around 10 minutes. When it finally happened, it was a little chaotic. They called Group 1 for boarding, but there were two lines that sort of merged together so it was a bit messy, but efficient overall.

Turning left this time!

Seat

I did take a picture of the cabin when first coming on board but it was quite blurry, so I took a couple more a few minutes later (which weren't much better).

Every seat was fully lie-flat, and had a screen, a shelf under the screen, a remote to control the IFE, a little niche for your feet, a pocket on the side of the seat, a tray table which folds into the side of the seat, and a small shelf that you share with the next seat. There was a pillow and blanket at each seat and individual lights and air vents.

Very little privacy, just the small divider.
A look at the controls for the seat:

Behind, there were noise-canceling headphones, charging ports, a headphone jack, and a little storage space. Unfortunately there didn't seem to be anywhere you were allowed to store bags during takeoff or landing.

Welcome drinks were offered: iced tea, orange juice, and butterfly pea juice. In hindsight I should have tried the butterfly pea juice but I just got orange.

Warm towels were handed out as well.

The tray had the TG symbol on it.

The special meal order was confirmed, and drink orders were taken.
There was a long wait on the ground as economy passengers boarded. The cabin was quite empty so I got a couple of pictures.

There was a magazine, safety card, wifi card, and sickness bag.

With nothing much to do as the flight still hadn't taken off, I decided to check out the IFE.

IFE & departure

The remote wasn't in great shape.

They started the safety video before I could look at the IFE. Thai has quite a… unique safety video.

After that was over I had a look at the content available on the IFE.

Decent selection overall. Note that there were no games available, despite the kids section showing that it had games.
I noticed that you could keep scrolling through and going to the next page even during the announcements.

Finally we took off a few minutes late, I couldn't really see anything out of the windows so no pictures from departure.

Dinner

Service began with nuts and dried fruits.

The crew put tableclothes on the tray tables.

Drinks were served before the food.

The whole meal was served on one tray (there was no dessert).

Bread was handed out from a basket.

Very good presentation. The meal itself was alright tastewise, good but nothing amazing. A dessert would have been nice.

Lights were dimmed quickly, but it took quite a while for the trays to be cleared. Tea and coffee were offered as the trays were cleared.
My only complaint about the meal service other than the delay in clearing the trays was that there was no water served (during the meal or at any point throughout the flight). Before takeoff I did see a FA walking around with bottles of water but I never got any. I'm sure I would have been given some if I had asked but it would have been nice if they had served water themselves.
Other than that the crew were great, very friendly and helpful.

In-flight

Since this was a short flight there were no amenity kits, but socks were available on request. I also found toothbrushes in the bathroom although there were no other amenities there.

I hadn't slept at all so I decided to get some sleep. The seat converted  into a fully lie-flat bed.

As I was getting ready to sleep I discovered another light, which had 3 or 4 levels of brightness.

It was very comfortable overall, especially with the blanket and pillow. It's not as cramped as it looks either, I didn't have any issues with it and I fell asleep pretty quickly.

Arrival & Suvarnabhumi Airport

I woke up shortly before landing, but then I'd started to drift off again. I was half asleep when we landed and for a second I thought we were going through some very bad turbulence.
No pictures of landing (because I wasn't fully awake) or planes in BKK (because it was dark but there were bright lights everywhere, so it would have been impossible to get any decent pictures).
This picture of the A350 we parked next to was the best I got.

Unlike in CCU, business passengers got a separate airbridge in BKK.
It was a long, long, long walk to immigration but luckily there wasn't much of a line. By the time immigration had been cleared the bags still hadn't started to arrive, not an issue for me since they had been checked through to Amman.

Time to go to the hotel and get some rest before returning to the airport at night for the flight to Amman.
Thanks for reading!