A brief review of RJ trans-atlantic service and its AMM lounge

A brief review of RJ trans-atlantic service and its AMM lounge

I recently flew RJ A330 from DEL-AMM, had a 1.5 day "connection", then RJ A340 from AMM-YUL. I spent 6 hours in the AMM Crown lounge. I traveled in Business Class. Here is a brief review of this experience.

AMM Airport: If you just flew into AMM or are doing so in the near future, this will be one of your less cherished airport experiences. However, they are building a new airport and your future arrivals and departures will be more enjoyable.

AMM Transit/Transfer staff: While space reflects the airport (see above), a counter to change money and a connection desk with 4-5 agents were at least adequate. Service was excellent. Upon noticing my long connection, they offered me a complementary room at the airport hotel. When I declined, they sent a staffer to accompany me to the "on the arrival visa" counter. Could have been a gesture towards my OneWorld Emerald status or Business Class ticket, and I am not sure if it made any difference, but the attention felt god.

On-time performance and communications: Poor. My ORD-YUL departure was delayed by 3.5 hours. Now, you realize that a pilot doesn't discover in the last minute "oops, I am more than 3 hours late". Such things are known in advance, at least broad picture, but RJ was very stingy with truth. At 1AM, my 230 departure was showing on time. At 2AM, it was advanced to 3AM. At 4AM, the board was showing estimated departure of 3:30; at 5AM the ETD moved to 4:30! Eventually we left around 6AM. To look at the bright side, this gave me a lot of time to experience the lounge and its staff.

A330/340 cabin and seats: Business class cabin is identical in A330 and A340. It was clean and spacious - in fact, so much space between rows is uncommon. Seats are comfortable. The design is a bit dated and lacks cleverly engineered spaces for shoes, eyeglasses, newspapers, headphones etc. (As I just just flew CX too, that is a well designed seat for such features.)

Cabin Service: Excellent. It is only in very minute details that you notice that the training is a notch below the very best. (E.g., when asked by my neighbor, one FA didn't know where the overhead lighting switch and headphone jack were. Not a big deal, but wouldn't happen on some carriers.) Nevertheless, excellent, friendly and competent in most ways.

Cabin Food: A- . A notch below the best, but well above the average and nothing to complain about.

Crown Lounge facility and food: The lounge is spacious and clean. Lots of computer terminals but only a few were working and nobody could fix the others. One unusual nice touch was personal entertainment stations with headphones. Food and beverages were not bad, but nothing exceptional.

Crown Lounge showers: Poor. The policy of charging elites and Business Class pax $15 for a shower should get the idiocy award of the year. Needless to say, even with only two showers, they get between little and zero use. One of them has evolved into the janitor's closet, while the other one sat unused throughout the six hours I was there.

Crown Lounge Staff: Friendly and generally competent. They too were handicapped by lack of information and had to deal with irate pax. Again, some staff just a notch below the best in professionalism - eg, socializing among themselves instead of serving the guests. However, our receptionist (midnight to 5AM on June 29) was superb in her balancing act and could easily work the LH First lounge at FRA or the CX at HGK. (If any RJ management is reading this: promote her, and fire the guys responsible for the shower policy and those for maintaining the information board).