A seven-hour overnight flight from Montreal to Algiers sounds like prime business class territory: a flat bed, a decent dinner, a few hours of sleep. On Air Algerie's Airbus A330-900neo, the blogger behind One Mile at a Time found something very different — and he says it may be the worst business class soft product he's encountered in over five million miles of flying.
The hardware isn't the problem. His aircraft was a former Air Belgium A330neo picked up earlier this year, with a staggered lie-flat configuration and comfortable seats. Air Algerie didn't customize the cabin at all, so nothing about it says "Air Algerie," and condition was shabby. Everything beyond the seat, though, fell apart.
No amenity kit, no menus, no slippers on an overnight flight. Headphones arrived 20 minutes after takeoff — barely better than economy earbuds, with no real noise cancellation — and were collected again before landing. There was a big blanket and pillow, which would have been nice if the cabin weren't sweltering; these jets have no individual air nozzles. The Wi-Fi hardware installed during the plane's Air Belgium days sits unused, and the seatback entertainment has roughly 100 movies and 36 shows — but not even a moving map.
Then there's the catering. The airline doesn't serve alcohol, and diet sodas are apparently not a thing — just sugary drinks, juices, water, coffee and tea. Getting any of it is a challenge: one drink service per meal, a glass left empty for over two hours, a refill request that never materialized. Meals come with no choices and no explanation — a watery smoked salmon starter, a dry, overcooked fish main, cheese, two whole apples, then small tarts. Bread was placed on trays by hand, and the tray itself was sticky. The first meal service dragged on for nearly three hours, and breakfast landed two hours before touchdown, meaning roughly five of the almost seven hours were devoted to eating. Crews never cleared anything, and the sequence was chaotic — cheese served 10 minutes before its accompanying bread, coffee offered 15 minutes after breakfast trays.
Service overall was described as indifferent rather than rude: no smiles, no engagement, minimal English, and announcements made only in French and Arabic — possibly a first for a flight departing North America without any English. The cabin crew also skipped pre-takeoff cabin checks.
So why should a traveller care? Air Algerie is modernizing its fleet with factory-fresh A330neos and charges substantial business class fares, which makes the gulf between price and experience especially stark. The writer's take: the fixes wouldn't cost much — menus, refills, clearing trays, basic communication — but they'd require a culture change the airline doesn't seem interested in. Since Algeria restricts tourism with a difficult visa policy and the carrier focuses on domestic and diaspora traffic, it arguably faces little competitive pressure. If you have flexible routing to North Africa, the smart move is to fly a connecting carrier through a hub like Tunis or Cairo instead — and treat this one as a curiosity.
