Vietnam Airlines A350 Business Class Review: Paris to Hanoi

Rating: 2/5 (Cramped Seats, Mediocre Food)

Route: CDG-HAN (depart 1:00PM arrive 5:30AM+1)

Price: 95,000 FlyingBlue Miles + $447 (note: this is the price for both this flight AND my previous Air France Business Class Flight from NYC to Paris)

Introduction

For my next segment on my trip to Southeast Asia, I was flying Vietnam Airlines from Paris to Hanoi. At this point I was delirious following my redeye from New York on Air France and getting half-sleep in the Air France Business Class Lounge. I was looking forward to sleeping for most of this flight, but unfortunately, the seat made that a bit difficult to do (more on that later).

The block time for this flight was 11 hours and 20 minutes, but a strong eastern tailwind shaved about an hour off the flight.

This was my first time flying on Vietnam Airlines, and also my first time to Asia broadly in more than 5 years, so I was very excited for this flight. The experience ended up being underwhelming across the board, but to be fair I was taking this flight after what is one of the best business class products on the market…

In this post, you’ll find:

Ground Experience at CDG

After arriving from my redeye flight from New York, I headed straight to the lounge in CDG Terminal 2E Hall M. I review the lounge in detail in my previous post. I had ~8 hours to kill here, which I spent getting some half-sleep in the relaxation area (which was unfortunately too noisy to get proper sleep). If flying Vietnam Airlines business class, you receive complimentary access to the Air France Lounge.

Rest area in the lounge:

Around 11AM, I went over to the gate. Hall M is fairly nice, with the same sweeping atrium architecture you’ll find all around CDG. My flight was departing out one of the farthest gates (M50) which was still only a ~5 minute walk from the lounge.

Soon enough, it was time to board. Boarding started with business class, followed by premium economy and economy, which was fairly quick.

Seat & Flight Review

Vietnam Airlines has a fleet of 14 A350-900s. 4 of them are configured with an older business class (29 seats, Stelia Solstys), and 10 of them are configured with newer product (29 seats, Saffran Cirrus III). Luckily, my flight had the newer hard product.

Here’s the seat map:

I was assigned seat 7K upon checking in. I tried selecting a seat before the flight by contacting Air France and Vietnam Airlines, both of whom said it was only possible after check in. I was happy with my randomly assigned seat (I just wanted a window).

The business class cabin looks quite nice, although one thing that struck me when entering was … the smell? The plane had this fairly strong musty odor, which was not a great first impression.

The seat itself looked nice – standard reverse herringbone lie-flat seat.

As you can see though, it’s definitely a tight seat. I’m 6’2 and struggled to properly lay down in the seat without bending one of my legs:

The seat came stocked with a amenity kit. It was a small Samsonite branded bag, with the usual things you’d find – plus a very strange comb.

Standard seat controls and IFE remote, as well as a USB port:

And the seat comes with headphones as well, if you need them:

Pretty soon, we were pushing back on this unusually warm February day in Paris:

Shortly after take off, the flight attendant came around with the lunch menu. Strangely, there was only one copy of the menu for the entire cabin. So she’d stop by each seat, wait for each passenger to read it, then take down the order, then take that same menu and hand it to the next person. I’ve never seen that before. I can’t imagine it would cost much to print menus for everyone…

I will say service was very friendly and warm on this flight, as per the norm on most Asian carriers.

Here were the choices for today’s lunch service:

I chose the chicory salad for my appetizer and Vietnamese chicken curry for my main. It was fine, although the portion of the main was small and something about the color of the chicken felt off…

We were heading eastbound, so after a few hours it was already sunset:

Soon the cabin lights were turned off and I went to sleep. Barring the crunched leg space, I slept very well on this flight, probably because I had been (mostly) awake for the past 24 hours straight.

Here’s the cabin at night:

After a good few hours of sleep, I still had a couple of hours to kill.

The IFE onboard was decent. They had a good mix of international and western TV shows and movies.

I rewatched a lot of Succession, which was great.

Awkward selfie:

About 2 hours away from Hanoi, breakfast service began. They served a mixed breakfast with some sort of crepe, yogurt and fresh fruit. This meal was actually quite good, and I liked it better than the lunch earlier.

Afghanistan Overflight

One interesting thing about most Europe to Asia routes is the crazy amount of navigational hoops Airlines now have to jump through to avoid current geopolitical conflict:

• Ukranian / near – Ukraine airspace is a no-fly zone, for obvious reasons
• Russian overflight is banned for most Western airlines (although interestingly, Vietnam Airlines is resuming Hanoi to Moscow flights in May 2025)
• To cross the middle east, airlines have to pick routes carefully to avoid Syria, Iran, and Yemen specifically

My flight was taking the common “Northern route” option: flying along the southern Black sea, then over Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. The riskiest part of the trip is flying over Afghanistan, because there is no functional air traffic control there. Most alarmingly, in case of any emergency that requires landing in the country, you’re in cowboy territory.

Here’s a view of our route, which you can see deliberately avoids some regions:

Conclusion

Overall, I did not like Vietnam Airline’s business class product. This is not to sound like a whiney blogger – at the end of the day I still enjoyed the flight and any lie flat seat is always appreciated for a long haul flight.

However, between the cramped seat and mediocre food, I wouldn’t fly with them again unless they were the only option.

Post flight, getting through customs was strangely quick (even with the Visa check required for Americans), and I was off to downtown Hanoi.