Air NZ Business Class 777-300 Review

Ratings:
Seat: 8/10
Food: 7/10
Service: 8.5/10
AVOD: 7/10
Lounges: 7.5/10

Overall: 8/10

Air NZ are a fantastic business class option for Velocity frequent flyers. With approximately 440 status credits up for grabs [depending on your domestic port in Aus], it can be a quick way to accrue enough status credits to hit Gold, leaving you to just do 4 eligible sectors on Virgin Australia planes [2 x return domestic trips will do].

Director Mark has flewn on the very first 777-300 flight from Auckland-Melbourne and Scott from our office has travelled on this product from San Francisco – Australia. It’s an excellent offering featuring the regular herringbone style seats also favoured by Virgin Atlantic and Air Canada. The bed is 22 inches wide and 6 foot 6 when reclined. The recline is achieved by the seat back folding forward to meet the ottoman, revealing more of a mattress looking back that you sleep on. The Air NZ staff will prepare the bed for you along with a comforter and nice pillow and quilt. The thicker mattress on the seat back is a major advantage of this setup, as opposed to the newer [and generally better] reverse herringbone seats where the seat slides forward to meet the ottoman. This results in less reclining options, you’re either relatively upright or fully flat. On the upside, you can recline in your seat right from take-off which is a feature I haven’t seen on any other carriers [although is coming to the Qantas A330 suites].

One of the smaller but nice touches with the different product from the 777-200/747 to the 777-300 is the placement of the seatbelt on the ottoman, for use by a partner to sit and chat with you. On the old livery, it sat up and it was constantly in the way when you were sleeping, with not a huge amount of room on the ottoman for your feet [and I’m only 5”11”]. Now the seatbelt is flush to the top of the ottoman and no longer protrudes. Other small touches are a very cool bathroom design and the modern white livery instead of the old brown look.

Air NZ feature a 12.2” 16:9 AVOD screen which comes out on a swinging arm, 1.8” wider than the smaller 4:3 TVs on the older product. Whilst it’s not the largest TV out there as it’s quite close to your eyes it makes it seem a lot bigger than an airline like Singapore Airlines who have them in the seatback way away at your feet. There was a good selection of movies and TV episodes although not as many on Qantas or Singapore Airlines, but certainly enough to keep me entertained.

Food on Air NZ is always exceptional regardless of whether you’re on the 777-300 or the 777-200 or 747 which fly to San Francisco and Vancouver. Our consultants will help you understand the product differences when booking your flights. Only certain flights between Aus and NZ feature business class with the A320 being an all economy fit-out. We can help you find the right dates to maximise business class connections.

Check out our Air NZ airfare deals to experience their award winning service.