A Flavour Of Arabia (Kuwait Airways)

Member Name: ultras67

Product:	Kuwait Airways
Date:	03/06/04 (738 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap Flights

Disadvantages: Security Hassles, OK Service

Last month I traveled with Kuwait Airlines from Bangkok to Manila so thought I would share my thoughts on them.

Given its name, you will not be surprisied to find out this is the airline of the Kingdom Of Kuwait.

Both legs were on an Airbus A340 with a standard passenger layout holding 280 passengers. The plane was 9 years old and showed it inside with bits of seat trim beginning to come off, some of the personal entertainment controls not working properly and so on Seat pitch is supposedly 32" and it felt about that with not much room to manouver.

The flight was about 2 hours 30 minutes long and one gripe I did have was on the outward journey, they started the inflight entertainment about 40 minutes into the flight which meant they didnt show the end of the film! What did happen at the end of Big Fish anyway?

The meals served were average western airline food with no real flavour but still mostly edible. There was a choice of meals but as I was at the back they had run out of one of them and I was stuck with what they had left - fortunately it was something I liked.

The level of service was effective without being notable, anytime something was asked for, it was brought but no real extra smile or effort. One thing of course that some people dont like is that the stewardesses are not native speakers of English. But I found that all the staff had an excellent level of spoken English.

They were the cheapest for the that particular route by a good margin ( By over 30 pounds ) as they had a special on that month.

One other area of concern is obviously the security sitation in that part of the world and to board the plane I had, in Bangkok, about 3 more checks than with other airlines and at Manila it consisted of eight in total to get onto the plane.

The routes are more widespread within the Middle East ( Kuwait, is of course the main Asian hub ) as you can imagine and to major cities in Eu
rope and America.

The airline is not part of any airline alliance ie Star or One World but does have agreements for connecting flights with various airlines and it does have its own mileage program - Oasis Club.

Their official website is at http://www.kuwait-airways.com

Overall, I would have to say that if price is your main concern then I would say give them a try, otherwise I would go with a main flag carrier like KLM, Malaysia or British Airways. Overall a 3 star effort.

Summary: