Trip Report: Royal Brunei Airways, Kuala Lumpur to Brunei (September 2019)

Trip Report: Royal Brunei, Kuala Lumpur to Brunei
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I was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Brunei and on this route there are three options - Malaysia, AirAsia, and Royal Brunei Air.  Royal Brunei is an airline I wanted to try, the flight times fit my schedule, and I have flown on Malaysia before (check out the review here), and the AirAsia schedule did not work for me on the outbound (I did use them on the return and you can check out that review here).  It was very easy to book the flight with Royal Brunei through their website, and I wanted to book a tour as well and the customer service - through the website, the phone, and email - were all very helpful and provided great assistance.  Royal Brunei is a full service airline so the ticket includes complimentary checked baggage, at 30kg, and complimentary meal and seat selection.  Most of their planes included PTVs on the seatback, but they also provide an app to download which provides entertainment if the operating aircraft does not have PTVs.  

The flight departs from Kuala Lumpur at 12:10pm and is scheduled to get into Bandar Seri Bagawan at 2:30pm.  Through the app and the website, I could check into my flight, confirm my seat selection, and make any changes to my flight.  I had arrived into Kuala Lumpur earlier that day on Malindo (check out that review here) so I was ready for the check-in desks to open at 9am.  Checkin went smoothly and I proceeded to the gate for my flight.  The incoming flight arrives into Kuala Lumpur at 11:10a and this plane is turn around for the outbound departing at 12:10pm.  The incoming plane landed on time, it was deplaned and we were boarded by groups - the group boarding was strictly enforced.  The operating aircraft was an Airbus A320 with a 2-2 seat layout in business and in a 3-3 seat layout in economy.  The FA's were very helpful and smiling in getting passengers to their seats and assisting them with their hand carry.  Once passengers were seated, the boarding doors were closed, a safety video was shown, and we pushed back and made our to Bandar Seri Bagawan.

The economy section was in a 3-3 seat layout.  The seat itself had a PTV on the back, with a USB and headphone jack, followed by a tray table, and then a seatback pocket with the airline magazine, duty free magazine, and the airline safety card.  The seatpitch was alright, not great but not bad, but there was a metal bar for the tray table that cut the seatpitch and hit at your knees (and it made the seating a bit uncomfortable).  The seat width was decent, comfortable enough, but the seat comfort was lower than I expected.  The PTV had a decent selection of TV shows, movies, and audio but the content is censored - the selection was definitely enough for this flight time but not sure it would be enough for longer flights that Royal Brunei operates, say to London.  The flight time to Bandar Seri Bagawan is 2hr 20min but as soon as we reached cruising altitude the inflight service started.  Complimentary meals plus complimentary drinks are provide along with complimentary tea and coffee, no alcohol and no pork are onboard.  Special meals were first delivered followed by regular meals - the meal portion was decent, similar to a standard airline meal, but the quality was lower than I expected.  I had high expectations from Royal Brunei and while the meal was a standard airline meal, I expected a bit higher quality for quality and flavor (in fact, AirAsia had better quality of food than Royal Brunei!?!).  Once the food was served, tea and coffee were also provided.  After the meal trays had been cleared, there was only about 30-45 minutes for the passengers to spend the time however they wanted before the captain indicated we had started out decent into Brunei.  The cabin was prepared for landing, we landed on time, taxied to the gate, and deplaned into Brunei.

Before my flight, I was very excited to fly with Royal Brunei.  I expected exceptional service and a

high quality product - they did deliver on the exceptional service as the customer service agents really worked with me to help me book what I wanted.  What they fell short on, in my opinion, was the high quality product because the onboard experience was decent and nice but it was not high quality; especially the seat comfort and the meal quality.  Also, the metal bar that was below the tray table that hit right at the knee - especially when someone would recline their seat - was a great inconvenience.  If I was to compare my inbound flight on Royal Brunei (a full service airline) and my outbound flight on AirAsia (a low-cost airline), the seat comfort was the same on both, the meal quality was higher on AirAsia, the service was definitely better on Royal Brunei and the entertainment selection was better on Royal Brunei.