EgyptAir, while not as widely known as some major airlines, offers a unique business class experience, particularly on its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. This review delves into the details of a flight from Washington Dulles (IAD) to Cairo (CAI), examining various aspects such as seat comfort, amenities, food, and overall service.
During our 3 Cards 3 Continents Challenge, I flew from Washington, DC (IAD) to Cairo, Egypt (CAI) in Egyptair’s 787 business class and it was a lot nicer than I had previously expected Egyptair business class to be. While Egyptair’s catering probably won’t win any awards and nothing about the experience was industry-leading, the cabin layout and seats were as nice as most other airlines in business class and service was better than I expected based on reviews I had read in the past. I found their 787 business class to be competitive with most other airlines.
Several years back I flew EgyptAir’s Boeing 777-300ER business class. My hope was that with the airline taking delivery of a new generation of planes with much better seats, the airline would also work on improving its services. To EgyptAir’s credit, the airline has reverse herringbone seats in business class on its Boeing 787-9s, which is a perfectly nice product.
Check-In and Lounge Experience
At Washington Dulles / IAD airport, EgyptAir has its ticketing booths in Section 1, which is the first section as you arrive to the airport. Since it was an international flight, there probably wasn’t any point to trying to check in online, so I figured that I would just check in at the airport.
The check-in agent invited us to use the Turkish Airlines IAD lounge, which is conveniently located right across from Gate B38 at IAD / Dulles where the IAD-CAI flight departs from. As it got closer to our flight time, we headed over to the B gates and did stop into the Turkish lounge for a few minutes.
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When flying from Cairo, EgyptAir offers separate check-in counters for business class passengers and a Fast Track security line for Star Alliance Elites. However, the entire process can still be time-consuming due to immigration and baggage scanning. There are two security checks - one before immigration and one after. If you are flying to the United States, you will go through another TSA-style body scanner and luggage scan before entering the boarding area.
Cairo Airport has security checkpoints before you can access the check-in desks, and you need to show a passport and proof of travel to get through. After passing through that screening, I found a sprawling but empty check-in area with kiosks scattered throughout.
Once through the final security, there is a business class lounge, but it is quite basic.
There were two Egyptair business class lounges in the terminal I visited in Cairo on my departure after my long layover in Cairo (which was on Turkish Airlines in business class). Oddly, they will only let you use the lounge near your departure gate. I know this because I went to the lounge near my gate first and they first checked to see which gate my flight was scheduled to use before letting me in. Later, there was a gate change. I walked toward the gate for my new flight and found the second lounge. When I brought in my boarding pass and the agent saw my original gate on it, she told me that I couldn’t enter as I had to go to the lounge near my gate. Take it from me: there’s not really much difference between the two, so don’t feel like you’re missing out on anything.
I still had a few minutes to kill until boarding, so I made my way to the carrier's Gienah Lounge, which somehow ended up being even less appealing than the terminal.
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There was natural light, but all of the windows had a heavy blue tint (likely to keep out some of the scorching desert sun), which resulted in a bizarre mix of colors throughout the lounge. The decor really needed some love, too - the lounge clearly hadn't been updated in many years.
There was a variety of snacks and soft drinks, but nothing appealed to me. Most of the items weren't labeled, either. Some were easily identifiable, others, not so much. Perhaps worst of all was the Wi-Fi performance.
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Cabin and Seat Comfort
EgyptAir’s business class cabin on their 787 aircraft has 30 seats arranged in a 1-2-1 reverse herringbone configuration, with all seats providing direct aisle access. The seats are excellent and offer a high level of comfort. Each seat comes with a cabin door that can be closed for extra privacy, while the window seats offer exceptional privacy. The middle seats have a window that can be opened or closed according to your preference. The cabin and seating area are in line with industry standards and very comfortable.
I had selected seats 10A and 10D for us. Couples traveling together might want to consider the D and G seats which have a partition that you can pull back. The seats were Collins AeroSpace’s Super Diamond product.
This product represents an enormous improvement over the 2-3-2 angle-flat seats on the carrier's 777s - it's quite possibly the most significant single-generation shift I've encountered.
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I landed on 16K, a window seat in the very last row. While 16K offered excellent privacy, it only had one window, while most other rows offered two. I found the seat to be especially spacious and comfortable, though. EgyptAir went for Collins Aerospace's Super Diamond, which you'll find on a number of major international carriers, including American Airlines' 787-9s and select 777-200s.
One of the nice features of these seats is that they have a tray located right underneath the TV, which can be opened to create a large workspace. The seats were Collins AeroSpace’s Super Diamond product. The seating area came with a pillow, blanket, an amenity kit, slippers, and a small set of stickers.
There was a decent amount of storage, starting with a large tray table underneath the 18-inch inflight-entertainment display. There was also a cushy ottoman with a small storage compartment underneath. The seat had another small, somewhat hidden compartment to the side of the footwell, which is where I found a water bottle waiting when I first arrived.
There were two enclosed compartments, as well, including one beside the window, which came with universal power, a USB port and a wired IFE remote. There was a second compartment on the aisle side, which was deep enough to hold my iPad. I could control the seat via a dedicated touch panel, with granular adjustments for the back and legrest.
The seat was comfortable in bed mode, but I really wished EgyptAir offered a larger pillow and a mattress pad. I was also disappointed to see that the carrier omitted dedicated air vents, which would have made it far more comfortable to sleep, too.
Power outlets built into the seats didn’t work at the first few seats I tried (though I eventually found one that worked).
Each seat featured a universal power socket and multiple USB ports, with the seat and TV controls also doubling up as storage areas. Each seat on the flight had a sticker that passengers could peel and attach to their seat back. The stickers had messages like “Wake me up for meal”, “Wake me up for duty-free shopping”, and “Do not wake for meal”. Although duty-free shopping wasn’t available on the flight, this was a clever idea which other airlines could adopt.
Most importantly, I found my window seat to be plenty cozy to get a full night’s uninterrupted rest - and since every seat has direct aisle access in the 1-2-1 business class layout, I’m sure the same could be said by anyone else on my flight.
The seating area had enough storage for small electronics, water, and shoes.
Amenities and In-Flight Entertainment
Waiting at my seat was a robust amenity kit stocked with the usual essentials along with some less-common items, like a hairbrush and shoehorn. There was also a medium-size pillow and a sealed comforter at my seat.
The Egyptair amenity kit was surprisingly extensive. Not only did it include standard stuff like an eye shade, socks, lip balm and lotion, but it also included a shoehorn and wooden brush along with hand sanitizer, a pen, a standard toothbrush kit, and ear plugs. That was far more than what was found in any of my other amenity kits this trip (Qatar had a nice box of Dyptique amenities, but no zip-up bag and it didn’t include things like the shoehorn and brush). I haven’t actually used the lotion / lip balm, so I can’t speak to the fragrance, but the bag became handy for collecting other lotions / toiletries from other stops and airlines on the trip.
EgyptAir provided noise-canceling headphones, and I was optimistic after seeing the high-end-looking case. The headphones themselves felt especially cheap, though. The sound quality was poor, and they weren't very effective at blocking out noise.
The amenity kit provided by EgyptAir was sufficient. It included earplugs, lotions, socks, eye masks, toothpaste, and other items. EgyptAir provided noise cancelling headphones that worked, though they were not as good as top-of-the-line headphones.
There is a large screen at your seat with a variety of different movies and TV. The entertainment selection is definitely more sparse than some other airlines that I have recently flown.
I was excited to see a brand-new 18-inch high-definition display, which, potentially, EgyptAir could have loaded up with dozens of Hollywood new releases. Instead, there were a mere 19 English-language movies. I wasn't excited about any of them, so I ended up watching the latest Godzilla flick despite encountering quite a few critical reviews.
The picture quality was decent, but my entire system crashed many times throughout the flight - every few minutes, in some cases - at which point I had to select the film again and scroll through to pick up where I left off.
The flight info display worked well, though, so I ended up keeping that up and watching content on my iPad, instead. The moving map was functional, too, making it easy to keep tabs on our position throughout the flight.
There is a large screen at your seat with a variety of different movies and TV. The entertainment selection is definitely more sparse than some other airlines that I have recently flown.
In terms of entertainment, this was where Egyptair was severely lacking. This was a non-issue for me as I’d already downloaded some things to watch on both my phone and laptop should I spend any time awake where I wasn’t either working on a post or eating a meal.
The TV was excellent. The interface was responsive and the fonts were large. However, the movie catalog was not large. It had a few recently released movies but the overall selection was pretty small.
EgyptAir is also a dry airline, and the airline seemingly doesn’t even put any effort into its non-alcoholic drink selection.
EgyptAir’s Boeing 787-9s have Wi-Fi. Well, they’re supposed to have Wi-Fi. Unfortunately Wi-Fi was broken on this flight. While I was planning on working for the flight, I instead turned to the entertainment selection. Aside from that, this is possibly the most limited inflight entertainment selection I’ve ever seen on an airline flying new wide body jets. Oh, and it doesn’t actually matter what the entertainment selection consists of, because my audio jack was broken, so I couldn’t actually hear anything.
EgyptAir's Dreamliners offer speedy Wi-Fi, but it can get quite expensive, since the airline prices packages based on usage rather than time. Everyone gets 5 MB to use in an hour for free. Beyond that, packages include: 5 MB for another 30 minutes ($2), 10 MB to use within one hour ($3.50), 15 MB in three hours ($4.50), 50 MB for the full flight ($12.50) and 100 MB for the full flight ($23). I ended up getting a 100 MB package, half of which I blew through with the speed test alone.
The flight had WiFi available, but it was quite expensive and had very low data caps, making it essentially unusable. They had an option for $25 for 300MB data, so do not plan to watch any Netflix over the Atlantic.
Food and Beverage
EgyptAir is a dry airline, which means that they don’t serve alcohol - instead it was a lemon / mint tea. This was no problem for me as I don’t drink alcohol anyways, but if you prefer alcohol as part of your premium cabin experience, you may want to choose a different airline. EgyptAir is a dry airline, meaning you can't get so much as a beer on board, so drinks were limited to juice, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and soda.
However, there are some reports that suggest that passengers are allowed to bring their own alcohol on board and consume it. I chose a tea with ginger and cinnamon, instead.
On my flight, the Wi-Fi was broken and my entertainment audio didn’t work. But the entertainment audio not working wasn’t a huge deal, as EgyptAir’s entertainment selection is abysmal. In terms of inflight service, it’s almost like EgyptAir wants to make sure you don’t know it’s an Egyptian airline, based on the food selection.
Shortly after pushing back from the gate, a flight attendant offered welcome drinks, and I went with a delicious strawberry juice.
About 25 minutes after takeoff, I was handed a menu and made my pick, assuming incorrectly that we'd be starting with the "hot lunch/dinner" on the left.
As it turned out, the first meal was served from the smaller breakfast section. I needed just a moment to decide, but when it was clear that I had made my pick from the wrong column, the flight attendant got impatient and immediately began walking away before I almost shouted out my selection.
Breakfast arrived about 50 minutes after takeoff and included my hot item pick, the "Oriental dish" of Egyptian beans with olive oil and "white cheese." The dish was hot, but there was a ton of oil, which overpowered the flavor of the beans.
The fruit was decently fresh, though, and I enjoyed some of the cheese. The croissant was soft, so I focused on that and the dry cinnamon roll.
After napping for a while, I went over to the galley to see what snacks were on offer. I ended up ordering the same ginger-and-cinnamon tea I had with breakfast, but the flight attendant misunderstood and brought me two separate teas, along with a yummy chocolate muffin.
I also ordered a Diet Coke. A Diet Pepsi arrived.
Five hours into our 11-hour flight, the crew turned on the cabin lights and announced that it was time for dinner. Yeah, the only other scheduled meal. I ordered the steak, which arrived just a few minutes later but was drenched in a mysterious brown sauce and way overcooked. The veggies had clearly spent too much time in the oven, as well.
I asked to try both desserts - a pastry with raspberry and a tartlet with chocolate cream - but only the pastry arrived. It was pretty hard, so I only had a few bites, but I enjoyed my ginger-cinnamon tea.
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