Review: Bamboo Airways A321 Business Class Hanoi to Singapore

​​After immersing myself in the Bamboo Airways 787 business class experience from London to Hanoi, I completed a second flight with the Vietnamese airline from Hanoi to Singapore.

This time, I was on the Airbus A321 aircraft, which is a considerably smaller and older plane within Bamboo Airways’s fleet. 

This short-haul flight offers a much more compact business class experience instead of lie-flat seats, but I was still curious to see how Bamboo Airways’s regional product holds up to its long-haul routes.

Bamboo Airways A321 Business Class – Booking

Bamboo Airways uses the Airbus A321-200 on select domestic and short-haul routes across Asia. It’s accompanied by the similar but slightly smaller Airbus A320-200, as well as newer-generation A320neo and A321neo aircraft, within the airline’s regional fleet. 

While the airline continues to modernize its fleet with newer aircraft, such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the A321-200 will likely still play a role in serving regional routes for the foreseeable future, until it’s eventually phased out in favour of newer A321neos. 

This flight was a part of the “Asia 3” Aeroplan sweet spot booking that I had made, which cost 87,500 points for business class flights from Newark–London–Hanoi–Singapore. I then added a stopover for an additional 5,000 points in London, for a total cost of 92,500 Aeroplan points.

This sweet spot allows you to travel from North America to Asia with partner airlines for just 87,500 points. You can fly up to 11,000 miles in distance, which lets you take the long way around via Europe or the Middle East to get to Asia.

It’s a prime example of leveraging the power of Miles & Points to unlock a premium travel experience, and is indeed one of the most attractive options when redeeming Aeroplan points.

Bamboo Airways A321 Business Class – Ground Experience

Unfortunately, international transit in Hanoi is still more painful than it needs to be.

You need your airline’s representative to meet you at the transit desk and process your boarding pass through a very manual process. In my case, it was the kind that involves a Bamboo Airways staff member WhatsApping their colleagues a picture of my passport.

After a while, our group of transiting Bamboo Airways passengers was sorted out. We were then led upstairs to the security queue, after which we found ourselves airside.

International business class…