Royal Brunei Airlines

✅ Verified Review | Melbourne to Bangkok return. This Royal Brunei Airlines flight is through Brunei and Melbourne to Brunei is on the Boeing 787 and then an Airbus from Brunei to Bangkok. All flights left on time or were early on arrival. My luggage was amongst the first off and I was given a Priority Pass for leaving Melbourne and for arrival and departure from Bangkok. Between Melbourne and Brunei and for the return sector the Business Cabin was full. Very good food for all meals with reasonable sized portions. I would have preferred earlier serving of the meal on the Brunei - Melbourne sector so that I could have had more sleep. The cabin attendants were helpful and efficient. The seats were comfortable and the B787 was a flat bed. On the shorter sector it was a reclining seat with a reasonable recline and good space for my legs. IFE was a bit limited and there should have been more choice in the array of films that were offered. I regularly fly from Melbourne to Bangkok and nearly always fly with Royal Brunei - they do not serve alcohol (Brunei is an Islamic country) but the level of service and the value for money is very good.

✅ Verified Review | I thoroughly enjoyed my flight from Melbourne to Dubai with Royal Brunei Airlines. The service was impeccable, food was delicious and the cabin was surprisingly very comfortable for economy class. I was also impressed by the dimming tinted windows. I was under the impression that we were flying through the night as they were dimmed. Once I automatically untinted the window, I realised that we were actually flying through daylight. Overall, it was an enjoyable flight.

✅ Verified Review | I found the seats to be very hard and uncomfortable for a long haul flight from Melbourne to Heathrow via Brunei with Royal Brunei Airlines. We ended up sitting on our slightly inflated neck pillows - that helped a little. Leg room in front was OK but the seats were very narrow. If a passenger in front reclined it made it difficult to eat from the tray and to view the screen. The meals were pretty good on the first leg but then went downhill from there. They were a little better on the way home from London. Food was plentiful and delivered with a smile. Due to there being no alcohol served the toilets remained clean and there was never a queue for them so the noise level within the aircraft was always at a minimum - even the babies were great. The customer service was outstanding - very respectful and courteous. They are happy to help in anyway they can. Brunei airport is very basic and very hot. I don't think they like to use air conditioning and the lights were kept low.

✅ Verified Review | Bandar seri Begawan to Manila. I'm very satisfied with the service. My hand luggage was 13kg, and usually they accept 7kg at maximum. Anyway they allowed me to bring it, otherwise I would have to pay for another luggage. The food was usable, but sadly no entertainment. Royal Brunei open the boarding 1h before take off, which makes it possible to have a earlier take off (happend to me both times I was flying RB).

✅ Verified Review | Dubai to London. I had a pleasant experience with Royal Brunei Airlines, comfortable seats, good food, a good selection of movies in the IFE. All round good customer service. For the price I paid it took me to my destination, nothing fancy like some of the other airlines flying to and from Dubai.

❎ Unverified | Flew Royal Brunei Airlines from London to Melbourne via Dubai and Brunei based on price alone, and pleasantly surprised by the service provided. Food was generally good, entertainment good and staff very pleasant. Dry aircraft was not an issue and indeed stops a lot of unpleasantness evident on some other flights due to passengers consuming too much alcohol. The stop in Dubai is a bit of a nuisance but allow you to stretch your legs. Seats are okay but get a bit hard after many hours but no worse than others. Overall good value for money and would use them again. Brunei airport is not very good but okay for a couple of hour stop.

✅ Verified Review | This flight was sold to us as one stop. However, there were in fact 2 stops. London Heathrow to Bandar seri Begawan stopping in Dubai, and we later connected to Bali. This should have been sold as 2 stops as it is misleading to say it's one and very wrong. We wouldn't have bought this flight if we had known. Brunei BWN airport has nothing in it. We had an 11 hour stop over which was torture. There are no restaurants or bars in the departures lounge and the whole airport smells of urine, partly due to the revolting toilets. Onboard the flights, the evening meals were tasty. Choice of chicken or beef (chicken lasagne / stir fry ginger beef - chicken chausseur / beef biriyani). Lunch was a disgusting and sour lemon chicken wrap that repeated on you. Breakfast was disgusting chicken sausage or beef sausage with a vile baked egg style thing. Due to being an airline based in a Muslim country, this is a dry airline and all food is halal. A 2 minute long prayer is said before each take off which is quite in your face for people that don't follow Islam. Seats are reasonably comfy - ok leg room. In flight entertainment was good, quite recent films. The cabin crew were very attentive and polite. I wouldn't travel with this airline again.

✅ Verified Review | Surabaya to Bangkok return via Bandar Seri Begawan. The planes are comfortable and clean enough while cabin crew are polite and friendly. I was disappointed by the fact that on three of the four flights they ran out of one of the meal choices before they even served half the passengers. (quality of the meal was good for short-haul). Another negative with Royal Brunei is the fact it is a dry airline so no alcohol can be served. If it changed this policy, it could be far more competitive. My fare was over US$200 cheaper than Garuda and Singapore Airlines, so I got very good value for what I paid.

✅ Verified Review | I flew RBA from Kota Kinabalu to London via Bandar seri Begawan and Dubai on 30 December 2016. We experienced a delay in Dubai for almost 16 hours due to fog in the UAE. I understand that this is beyond the control of RBA. However, the appalling situation was that there was no proper communication and no RBA ground staff in Dubai airport to assist stranded passengers. Either the RBA staff have taken off their uniform not wanting to face the frustrated customers, I'm not entirely sure but they cannot be identified at all. We arrived into Dubai at approximately 1.30 a.m. from Brunei and have been stranded until 5.20 p.m on 31 December 2016. With such a long delay, we should have been given a hotel. We were also not given any meal voucher, but was told to go to either McDonald's or KFC for meals. Upon reaching the McDonald's counter, I was told I could only choose either a beef or chicken meal! But I am a vegetarian and I was told they could not help me without RBA authorisation. But there was no RBA ground staff to be seen! I was supposed to reach London at about 6.40 a.m. on new year's eve to celebrate the countdown with my wife and children, but we only arrived at 9.30 p.m. into Heathrow. As I live in Somerset, I only reached home at 12.30 a.m. on new year's day to a disappointed family! I thought RBA has improved with the service after many years for not flying with the airline, but I now feel I have made a terrible terrible mistake in choosing RBA once again with this trip.

✅ Verified Review | Melbourne to Hong Kong return via Bandar Seri Begawan. Outbound from Australia to Brunei there were just four passengers in Business Class, yet when I submitted my meal preference (not two hours into the flight) I was advised that it was unavailable and asked to choose something else. I accepted that reality at the time and emailed Royal Brunei Airlines after our trip to complain. No acknowledgement or response, ever - nothing. Two years later, and two issues about which I sought to engage the airline. Outbound from Brunei for Hong Kong I was unimpressed by the torn and ragged seat upholstery facing me on the back of the two seats ahead of us. I wrote to RBA about this and another matter. Again, the response was nothing. Six months later I finally manage to drag them into communication, and although the response was ‘professional-polite’, I had clearly become their serial-pest, not a customer deserving of respect. To the ‘other matter’. Upon being called to board the late evening Brunei-Melbourne flight, we followed instructions to proceed to Gate. It turns out that Gate was at the furthest end of one of their new finger piers. We walked down the totally empty pier to its farthest extremity and sat in the boarding lounge. After about 20 minutes, the staff showed up and beckoned us through the gate for a boarding check. We were then directed to walk all the way back along the totally empty finger pier to the terminal hub from whence we’d come, where we found our boarding gate was open and we could proceed onto the aircraft. I asked the airline to explain this piece of silliness. Over a series of responses I was told ‘A lot of international airports require you to walk a long distance’ (perhaps so, but not in order to return to where you started), and ‘RBA does not own the airport and has no control over the airport administration’s requirements’ (a pitiful excuse considering BWN is the primary airport in the nation of Brunei and is the home base for RBA), and finally ‘The Australian government has security requirements that caused this’. I am unhappy because it takes you half a year to drag the airline into communication, you are admonished for not having complained to the cabin crew at the time (the crew had adequate opportunity to notice the cabin furnishing damage but obviously had not), you are lied-to regarding the reasons some particular passenger management action has occurred, you are not a satisfied customer. We have disposed of our Royal Skies membership cards and will not choose to fly Royal Brunei Airlines again.