Austrian vs Azores Airlines

Best product each one flies

Scored on what can be verified. Service, food and ground recovery are absent deliberately: they need someone in the seat, and they live in the reviews rather than here.

One caveat on the Value line, stated rather than buried: Value is computed from business fares, and a carrier with too few of them does not get a Value score at all. Where you see a dash, we have fewer than three priced business routes for that airline and did not want to invent a figure from one or two — so its product score is the mean of three dimensions rather than four, and it is not directly comparable to a score built on hundreds of fares. The airlines with the most fares behind them are named on the business-class ranking.

Dimension by dimension

• Seat: Austrian

  8/10 on the 787-9 against 0/10 on the A321neo / A321LR.

• IFE: level

  Screens, connectivity and power: 8/10 against 8/10.

• Lounge & bags: Austrian

  What the fare includes before you board: 10/10 against 5/10.

• Value: Azores Airlines

  Median premium over the cheapest carrier on the same route: 7/10 against 10/10.

What happens if the aircraft swaps

Both carriers are paying-the-same-fare-either-way propositions on some frames. The worst product each one flies:

Austrian: Thompson Vantage in alternating 1-2-1 and 2-2-2 rows. Recorded as no direct aisle access because the field means every seat, and here it is row-dependent.

Azores Airlines: Comfort Class is a wide 2-2 recliner, not a lie-flat business seat. The airline states about 40 degrees of recline; it is closer to US domestic first than to a transatlantic bed, and the sub-five-hour Azores sector is what it is built for.

Common questions

Is Austrian or Azores Airlines better to Europe?

Austrian scores 8.3/10 against Azores Airlines at 5.8/10 on seat, screens, lounge and fare. On the four dimensions we can verify, Austrian wins 2 and Azores Airlines wins 1. Service and food are not scored here because they cannot be read off a spec sheet.

Does the aircraft change the answer?

Yes. Austrian scores 8/10 on the 787-9 and 5/10 on the 777-200ER. Check the equipment on your date before deciding.

Has Jon flown either of these?

Azores Airlines, in business on a Europe route. Austrian has not been flown, so nothing here claims firsthand experience of its cabin.