A great flight from a beautiful airport – 4 hours and 40 minutes in a leather recliner seat with 46" of pitch. Full lunch and beverage service.
Pros
- Real Business Class seats, not the European "Economy + blocked middle seat" nonsense
- Good food, Arabic coffee
- Amazing service
- Good award availability through British Airways
- Great lounge
- Amman airport is beautiful
- Rental car return is right in front of the main terminal building
- Bone yard right next door for some aviation geek plane-spotting
Cons
- Check-in 3 hours before flight
Tips
- There is no overhead bin storage for rows 1 or 2 on the starboard side (seats A and B), this isn't shown on Seatguru
- If you're continuing on to other parts of Germany via train, the German Rail app lets you buy tickets directly from your smartphone, bypassing the often-long lines at machines and staffed counters.
- Use the dedicated Business Class check-in entrance
How I did it
Initially I redeemed 29,000 British Airways Avios points plus $181 for a flight from Aqaba, Jordan to Amman and then onward to Frankfurt, all in Business Class. The details are
here, but it was a nice redemption – 4.7¢ per point.
Airport
The Amman airport is
gorgeous – it reminds me a bit of Frank Lloyd Wright's
Johnson Wax building. It's 30 km southeast of downtown and there's no rail link. Uber works in Amman, but do remember that T-Mobile and AT&T do not have roaming agreements in Jordan and the fee is US$15 per megabyte. (Verizon
seems to have an agreement) This could drastically impact the cost of your Uber ride.
Several different people we talked to confirmed what the email from Royal Jordanian told us: you need to arrive 3 hours before take-off. In our experience, there were almost no lines for security, and our early arrival actually delayed us – the counter where you can get your visa fees waived for visiting Petra hadn't opened yet!
TIP: If you're returning a rental at the Amman airport,
the rental return is very confusing: you actually drive into the middle lane
with the big red ⛔️
no entry sign! (at the bottom of the sign in small
print it says "rental car return")
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| I love the ceilings! |
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| Park |
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| Rental car return is right at the lower level of the main terminal |
Lounge
The Royal Jordanian lounge is on a mezzanine level that overlooks the airport. In addition to the great view, it had an impressive spread of food, especially for a Business Class lounge at breakfast time. There was fast Wi-Fi (critical considering the cellular roaming situation in Jordan) and there was plenty of space.
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| Lounge entrance |
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| bread and pastry |
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| Hummus, baba ganouj, cheese |
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| more pastry |
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| espresso |
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| fruit and cake |
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| ful medames |
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| I had the ful |
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| wine bar |
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| fruit to-go |
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| Prayer rooms |
Boarding
Our flight was on-time and we boarded at Gate 132, at the far end of one of the airport's two main concourses. Business Class boarded first, and the gate area was very calm and quiet. Business Class was mostly empty.
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| Our plane |
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| Gate |
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| Gate area |
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| Seat and pillow |
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| Cabin |
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| No overhead storage for seats A &B in rows 1 and 2 |
Flight
We were offered apple juice, orange juice, and Arabic coffee soon after we were seated. The approach to our runway had an amazing view of a neighboring boneyard – so many old planes! Once we were airborne we were offered drinks, warm nuts, and headphones.
The appetizer was smoked fish, salad, and bread. For my main I ordered the Hammour fillet. It was delicious. The cake was unremarkable, but the mint tea with fresh mint they served with it was excellent.
The flight is 4 hours and 40 minutes, so not quite long but not quite short. Nearly everyone onboard wanted to sleep most of the flight. The attendant checked in on us several times since there was no way we were going to sleep after that Arabic coffee!
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Arabic coffee served straight from a Dallah
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| Boneyard |
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| Menu (click to enlarge) |
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| Menu (click to enlarge) |
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| Drinks and warm nuts |
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| Appetizer |
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| Main |
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| Tea (with fresh mint) and chocolate cake |
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| Espresso machine |
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| Airshow |
Landing
German customs was an absolute mess. There were only two agents on duty for hundreds and hundreds of passengers. Our destination was actually Baden-Baden (about an hour away by bullet train), so I'm very thankful for the German rail iPhone app – it let me monitor how full the various trains were and let me buy a ticket for the next train right after we cleared customs. The ticketing machines and staffed windows all had long lines, so it was nice to just grab a bottle of water and a snack and make our way to the correct platform.
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