My Experience Flying Fiji Airways: Business Class In, Economy Out

I ended up flying Fiji Airways twice on this trip, first from Singapore to Nadi in business class and then from Nadi to Melbourne in economy. Both were American Airlines AAdvantage award tickets, and neither cabin had been chosen because I’d decided I particularly wanted to review Fiji Airways.

I’d already done the math separately. On Singapore to Nadi, once I’d compared the cash cost of an economy ticket with the features I actually needed against the mileage cost of business class, business had quietly become the rational option. On Nadi to Melbourne, the same framework produced the opposite answer.

That left me with an accidental experiment: two Fiji Airways flights within a week of each other, booked through the same partner program, but experienced from opposite ends of the plane. The airline itself came out of it rather well. The technology surrounding my economy booking, less so.

The advantages started at Changi. I arrived a little over two hours before departure and there was essentially no wait at the business-class check-in desks, while perhaps ten people were waiting in economy.

That probably saved me about 15 minutes. Useful, although hardly transformative. Business class didn’t buy me anything at security because nobody else was waiting there either.

I was more interested in seeing which lounge Fiji Airways would use in Singapore. Fiji Airways is now a full oneworld member, so perhaps British Airways, Qantas or Cathay Pacific would appear somewhere in the equation. Instead, I was directed to the Marhaba Lounge.

I approached reception, looked at the list of accepted programs and smiled. Priority Pass was on there, so another benefit of the business-class ticket was something I already had. I could have bought economy and entered exactly the same lounge using one of my Priority Pass memberships.

That’s not a criticism of Fiji Airways. A nice lounge is still a nice lounge, and I was happy to use it. It just meant that the incremental value I was extracting from the business-class ticket before boarding was proving fairly modest. Once onboard, things got more interesting.

FJ362 from Singapore to Nadi was configured 2-2-2 in business class, with forward-facing angled-flat seats. That’s perfectly respectable, but the problem is aisle access.

I’d chosen my usual side aisle seat. In this configuration, however, a passenger sitting by the window doesn’t have a separate route to the aisle. If the aisle passenger has fully reclined the seat overnight, the window passenger has to negotiate their way past.

It didn’t cause me any problem on this flight. Nobody climbed over me in the middle of the night. But it gave me another little rule to add to the collection I’ve accumulated by overthinking travel for years: if I’m presented with this particular 2-2-2 configuration again, I’d choose one of the two center seats. Both center seats have direct aisle access, so the problem disappears.

The cabin itself otherwise did what I wanted it to do. The crew were lovely, helpful and unmistakably Fijian in their hospitality. There was something rather nice about getting that first taste of Fiji before we’d actually reached it.

Even the hot towel was memorable. It had a pineapple scent strong enough that for a moment I wondered whether my hands were going to end up sticky. They didn’t. Clearly this was pineapple essence rather than someone squeezing fruit over the towels.

I’d started with a glass of Gardet NV Brut Tradition Champagne after boarding and had plenty of time to look through the menu.

For dinner I ordered the mesclun and pumpkin salad to start, followed by the signature beef slider and seasonal fruit. The slider came with sliced cheddar, fresh rocket, relish, sriracha mayo and roasted potato wedges, and I’d asked for the 2022 Frankland Estate Cabernet Sauvignon to accompany it.

As the meal service approached, one of the crew came over and asked whether I’d be willing to have something else. The beef sliders had been fully allocated. I must have looked like the easiest pushover in the cabin. Perhaps I’d been too friendly.

She was right, though. I wasn’t remotely bothered. I switched to the honey soy roasted chicken with bok choy, carrot batons and steamed rice, and asked if I could have the 2022 Sean Minor Chardonnay instead. When dinner arrived, so did both glasses of wine. I found a way to get that working.

None of this was a negative. Quite the opposite, really. The meal was good, the crew handled the unavailable choice nicely, and I wasn’t particularly invested in eating a miniature hamburger at 35,000 feet. If anything, it was another small example of why I came away liking the service.

None of this changed the one reservation I had about the flight. The food was good, the wine list was respectable and the service was warm without being overdone. The seat was useful on an overnight flight, but 2-2-2 without direct aisle access for every passenger isn’t the configuration I’d choose if several airlines were offering comparable schedules and prices.

There’s a tendency to reduce business-class seats to whether they recline flat. That’s less of a big deal to me, and in any case it doesn’t make every seat equally good. I’d happily fly Fiji Airways business class again. I’d just pay more attention to exactly where I sat.

A few days later, it was time to see the airline from economy.

My Nadi-Melbourne ticket was another AAdvantage award, and this time I was flying with my family. I like aisle seats, and that isn’t a mild preference I discover when somebody hands me a boarding pass. If I can choose one in advance, I do.

In the weeks before departure, I’d tried to allocate one through Fiji Airways’ Manage My Booking system. It didn’t want to cooperate, apparently because this was an American Airlines award ticket. Trying from the AA side wasn’t much better; it essentially sent me back toward Fiji Airways.

The flight wasn’t particularly long, and I could still see several seats that would work, so I wasn’t terribly concerned. I’d try again when online check-in opened. At 24 hours, I did exactly that. Seats I would happily have taken were visible, but the system still wouldn’t let me select one.

Eventually I checked in, accepted the seat I’d been assigned and called Fiji Airways to see whether someone could change it manually. Apparently I’d done that in the wrong order. Once I’d checked in, the telephone agent couldn’t override the seat; had I called before checking in, I was told, things might have been different.

There was still one possible solution. The agent could put a note against an available aisle seat, effectively circling the one I wanted in the booking and hoping the request made its way through to the airport. Fine; circle away.

When we arrived at Nadi, the seat wasn’t mine. Someone else had it, and when I asked whether I could simply take another aisle seat instead, I was told there weren’t any left.

This was the point at which I got a wee bit grumpy. I’d been trying to solve a very simple problem for weeks. I’d tried Fiji Airways online, I’d tried from the American Airlines side, I’d tried again at check-in, I’d called Fiji Airways, and someone had supposedly put a note against an available seat. Now I was standing at the airport being told there were no aisle seats left.

The check-in agent remained considerably more patient than I was. He looked around for a while and eventually asked whether I’d be willing to sit in an exit row.

Would I be willing? It was an aisle seat near the front of the economy cabin, with substantially more legroom and only one passenger next to me rather than the two I’d have had in most of the regular rows. After weeks of unsuccessfully trying to secure an ordinary aisle seat, I’d somehow ended up with a better seat than the one I’d been chasing. We got there in the end.

The most memorable part of the actual Nadi-Melbourne flight wasn’t the seat. It was breakfast. There were two choices. One was a conventional cooked breakfast and the other was described as banana bread. I checked later what everyone else in the family had ordered. They largely went for the cooked option and subsequently weren’t particularly impressed by it, while I chose the banana bread.

Calling what arrived banana bread considerably undersold it. It was a thick slice served warm with custard and caramelized pineapple, much closer to some sort of Polynesian sticky toffee pudding than the slice of banana loaf I’d imagined when ordering. On an economy-class plastic tray, it wasn’t the prettiest plated dish I’ve ever had. That said, I loved it.

There are plenty of airline meals I couldn’t describe a week after eating them. I’d order this one again tomorrow.

It was also a strangely appropriate ending to my Fiji Airways experiment. The business-class dinner had involved Champagne, a menu of several courses, a wine list and a last-minute main-course substitution. The economy meal involved me ignoring the sensible breakfast and ordering banana bread, and the banana bread might be the food I remember longer.

I’d happily fly them again, and more importantly, I wouldn’t feel any particular need to fly them in business class every time.

The Singapore-Nadi business-class experience was genuinely good. The crew were excellent, the food and drinks were enjoyable and a deeply reclining seat was useful on the overnight flight. The weakness was the 2-2-2 seating configuration, which doesn’t give every passenger direct aisle access.

Economy from Nadi to Melbourne was perfectly comfortable once the airport agent solved my seat problem, and that flight reinforced why I’d booked the two cabins differently in the first place. Business class had made economic and practical sense on the longer overnight flight from Singapore. It hadn’t on the shorter daytime flight to Melbourne.

The biggest frustration wasn’t either cabin. It was trying to manage an American Airlines award booking through Fiji Airways before departure. Something as mundane as choosing an aisle seat became a multi-stage exercise involving two airlines’ systems, online check-in, a telephone call and finally a human being at Nadi Airport.

The human being fixed it, which might actually summarize my two flights rather well. Some of the hardware was imperfect and some of the technology was irritating, but whenever I dealt with Fiji Airways staff, the experience got better.

And occasionally they brought me two glasses of wine.

Singapore to Fiji: Business Class was the Rational Option

Singapore Changi Departure: Business Class Adds Less than You’d Expect

Nadi to Melbourne: Same Framework, Different Answer

Fiji Airways Premier Lounge Nadi