Royal Air Maroc Business Class: The Best-Evidenced Seat We Score

Royal Air Maroc has the best-evidenced good cabin on this site, and almost nobody can book it.

Both halves of that need saying together, because the first is the reason it deserves a review and the second is the reason you may never have considered it.

The scores

Our score

9.0/10

Seat

8

IFE

8

Lounge

10

Value

10

Scored against our published rubric.

9 out of 10, number 4 of the cabins we have verified — and the important part is not the number, it is what stands behind it.

Three cabins score higher: Qatar's Qsuite and Etihad's Business Studio at 9.3, both scored on three dimensions because neither flies enough priced business routes to earn a Value, and Royal Jordanian at 9.3 on four dimensions across five routes.

Royal Air Maroc's 9 is computed on four dimensions across 46 priced business routes. It is the highest score on this site with real evidence underneath it, and a ranking that lists it fourth without saying so is telling you less than it appears to.

A perfect Value in both cabins

This is the rare part. Value is computed from what a carrier charges against every other airline on the same route in the same week, and Royal Air Maroc scores 10 out of 10 in economy and 10 in business.

In economy its median premium is $0 across 38 routes. A median of zero does not mean occasionally cheap — it means that on a typical route Royal Air Maroc flies, Royal Air Maroc is the cheapest fare available. It is outright cheapest on 20 of its 38 routes, and second of 31 carriers on price.

In business the premium is $94 across 46 routes.

Six carriers price lower in business, and this is where coverage decides the answer:

Carrier	Product score	Business routes	Median premium
Royal Air Maroc	9	46	$94
Royal Jordanian	9.3	5	$457
British Airways	8.8	428	$1,205
Finnair	8	22	$1,580
Iberia	8	56	$2,481
American	7.5	196	$2,975

Of the carriers cheaper than Royal Air Maroc in business, only Icelandair has meaningful coverage — and Icelandair's Saga Premium is a recliner, not a flat bed. The others price three to sixteen routes each.

Among airlines that sell a genuine lie-flat seat at a low fare, Royal Air Maroc has more evidence behind it than anything else we price.

The seat

Aircraft	Seat	IFE	Lounge & bags	Value	Product
787-9	8	8	10	10	9

Our seat score is lie-flat, direct aisle access from every seat, and a closing door. The 787-9 takes the first two and misses the third, for 8 out of 10 — the same geometry as Turkish's 787 and TAP's A330neo, and one point behind the door-equipped suites at the top of the ranking.

The 787-8 is a different cabin: older, denser, and one where window passengers climb past a neighbor. We could not establish its specification to a standard worth publishing, so our data flags it rather than scoring it. That is a real gap on our side and it matters here — the same fare can produce either aircraft, and only one of them is the cabin scored above.

Casablanca is the whole airline

Every one of Royal Air Maroc's 84 fares in our grid connects through Casablanca. There are no nonstops to Europe at all.

From	Routes priced	Cheapest fare	Routes won
Los Angeles	15	$564	14
Miami	11	$655	3
Washington DC	9	$682	2
New York	3	$824	1

Four US cities: New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington. That is the constraint, and it is severe — 22 of the 26 gateways we price cannot buy this product at any fare.

The mechanism is geography. Casablanca sits on the western edge of North Africa, closer to New York than any European hub and close enough to Madrid, Lisbon or Rome that routing through it costs very little detour. A carrier there can price a through-fare against airlines flying the Atlantic directly and win, which is exactly what the $0 median premium records. It is the same engine that makes TAP cheap through Lisbon, sitting a few hundred miles further south and working slightly better.

Where it wins, it wins from Los Angeles more than anywhere:

Route	Royal Air Maroc fare	Next cheapest airline	Difference
Los Angeles → BCN	$564	$752 Air France	Royal Air Maroc by $188
Los Angeles → FCO	$620	$788 Air Canada	Royal Air Maroc by $168
Los Angeles → MXP	$620	$686 SAS	Royal Air Maroc by $66
Los Angeles → LIS	$621	$781 Air Canada	Royal Air Maroc by $160

A west-coast passenger flying to southern Europe is already committed to a connection somewhere. Casablanca is no worse a place to make it than Lisbon or Frankfurt, and the fare is frequently better.

The detour works northbound too, which it should not

The obvious assumption about a Casablanca hub is that it serves Iberia and the Mediterranean and falls apart the further north you go. We checked, and it does not: Royal Air Maroc wins 10 of its 20 southern and Iberian routes and 10 of its 18 everywhere else. There is no southern bias in the data at all.

What there is instead is a Los Angeles story:

Route	Royal Air Maroc fare	Next cheapest airline	Difference
Los Angeles → CDG	$625	$738 SAS	Royal Air Maroc by $113
Los Angeles → LGW	$653	$925 SWISS	Royal Air Maroc by $272
Los Angeles → LHR	$692	$813 SAS	Royal Air Maroc by $121
Los Angeles → AMS	$752	$831 British Airways	Royal Air Maroc by $79
Los Angeles → MUC	$755	$869 Finnair	Royal Air Maroc by $114

Los Angeles to London Gatwick via Casablanca is $272 cheaper than the next carrier selling that city pair. Paris is $113 under SAS, Munich $114 under Finnair, Amsterdam $79 under British Airways. Those are northern European capitals reached by flying to North Africa first, and the fares still win.

The reason is that from the west coast every European itinerary is a long connection. Once you have accepted one, the geography of where you make it matters far less than what the airline charges — and a Casablanca connection to London is not meaningfully worse than a Copenhagen or Zurich one. From the east coast, where nonstops to London are plentiful and cheap, the same routing stops making sense immediately.

Booking it with points

Royal Air Maroc joined oneworld in 2020, which is what makes it reachable: Avios, American AAdvantage and Atmos Rewards all book oneworld partner awards.

But think carefully before spending points here, because this is the clearest case on the site against it. Our points arithmetic works from the cash fare you are beating, and Royal Air Maroc's cash fare is the lowest in its alliance. A cheap ticket is a bad redemption, however good the seat. Points belong on Delta One or British Airways, where the cash number is genuinely out of reach.

The verdict

If you fly from New York, Los Angeles, Miami or Washington — and especially from Los Angeles — this is close to the strongest business-class buy in our data, wherever in Europe you are going: a 1-2-1 flat bed at a $94 median premium, on more priced routes than any other cheap carrier with a real bed.

Check the aircraft. The 787-9 is the cabin above; the 787-8 is not, and we have deliberately not scored it rather than guess.

And if you fly from anywhere else, this page is unfortunately an explanation rather than a recommendation. The best-evidenced seat we score is sold to four American cities, and no amount of flexibility about dates or destination changes that.