How I (almost) recreated British Airways Club Europe business class on Vueling for £64 one-way

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I was in Gatwick’s South Terminal last Thursday reviewing the new My Lounge lounge as you may have seen on Monday. I was on my way to Barcelona to do a review for Marriott which will run in a day or so.

Flying early in the morning from Gatwick South meant flying Vueling, BA’s low-cost Spanish sister airline, as the BA flights departed too late for my schedule.

Last year we tried to review Vueling’s Excellence business class service. I say ‘tried’ because Anika’s flight was moved to a charter aircraft and she was downgraded. Since then, Vueling has dropped Excellence and I wanted to see what had replaced it.

Last Summer I did a popular piece on trying to recreate the British Airways Club Europe experience on easyJet. This seemed a good opportunity to try the same thing with Vueling.

What does it cost to recreate British Airways Club Europe on Vueling?

In the end, it came out at £64 for the one way trip to Barcelona. You really can’t complain about that.

The base fare was just €32 (£29). This came with a 10kg hand baggage allowance which was all I needed. Unlike, say, Ryanair, at no point was my hand baggage weighed and at no point was I expected to fit it inside a measuring gauge. The whole experience was very grown up.

I’m getting ahead of myself. This is how I planned my ‘Club Europe lite’ trip.

The £64 cost broke down as:

€32 (£29) base fare – I will earn some Avios back in my Vueling Club account based on 4 Avios per €1, although this will be after some taxes are deducted

€18 (£16) additional payment for a Row 1 seat, which included Group 1 boarding

£15 payment for access to My Lounge at Gatwick South, which comes with use of the Priority Security lane – and I got 400 Virgin Flying Club miles back via this promotion

€4 (£4) for a coffee and piece of cake on board – to be fair, I would have needed to spend €10 to get nearer to a Club Europe meal experience

This replicates, almost perfectly, the British Airways Club Europe package with the following exceptions:

DOWNSIDE – Vueling sells the middle seat (and it was sold on my flight); no wardrobes; no checked baggage allowance

UPSIDE – far wider food selection on Vueling than BA; seat selection is included in the prices I quoted; Row 1 is not restricted to elites (as long as you pay up) as it is on BA; boarding is via air bridges at Gatwick and Barcelona (unlike some low cost carriers)

Let’s look at how each part of the package performed in practice:

Priority security

Here is a handy tip. Premium Security – bookable here – costs £5 per person at Gatwick South. However, for £15 I booked myself access to the new My Lounge (reviewed here) via this Virgin Atlantic deal and this comes with premium security for free.

If you have a Priority Pass or other lounge access card, you can use the No 1 Lounge at Gatwick South. This lounge is usually full at peak times, so you should reserve your No 1 Lounge visit for £5. This £5 reservation payment also gets you access to Premium Security.

At 7.30am on a Thursday, Premium Security was TOTALLY empty.

The lounge

I wrote about My Lounge Gatwick South in my review yesterday.

It clearly isn’t the same scale as the British Airways lounges in Gatwick South which we reviewed here, which are arguably better than those at Heathrow but it did the job.

Subject to capacity I could also have used my Priority Pass (free with my Amex Platinum charge card) at No 1 Lounge Gatwick South, reviewed here.

Speedy Boarding

On British Airways I would have boarded in Group 1 as a Club Europe passenger.

Vueling also let me board in Group 1 as I paid €17.99 for a Row 1 seat. Only about 5-6 people had Group 1 boarding. This was VERY well policed by the Vueling staff who were throwing out people trying to sneak through.

On landing I was first off the plane and, as Vueling used a jet bridge, I was the first person at passport control.

Seating

Take a look at my Vueling leg room which is totally on a par, if not better, that BA Club Europe in the bulkhead. You should also remember that you generally need to be BA Gold to book Row 1 in Club Europe whilst Vueling offers it to anyone who is willing to pay.

You can’t complain about that. I was in 1C. On British Airways I target 1C or 1D.

Unlike some easyJet and BA aircraft, there was a bulkhead in front of Row 1. It had a window in it, which was a novelty:

The difference between BA and Vueling is that 1B was filled. There was no fighting over the armrest, however, as the petite woman in 1B was leaning on her partner in 1A. Due to the curve in the fuselage, 1A looked a bit tight although you obviously got a window. I was very happy in 1C.

Here’s my handy tip:

All six seats in Row 1 were sold. However, only one of the six seats in Row 2 was sold. This is also an ‘extra leg room’ row but I think you pay less than €17.99.

Take a look – it is a decent amount of space:

Food and drink

The upside of Vueling is that you get a far wider variety of food and drink than you would get on British Airways Club Europe. It is not as good, but there is more choice.

There were no easyJet-style bacon sandwiches for breakfast from the Spanish, not surprisingly. Options included a €4.50 ‘mini sandwich’, €6.50 for a club sandwich (€9.50 as a meal deal), €4 for coffee and a snack (Kit-Kat, piece of cake, waffle etc) etc. The most interesting options were a meat-based tapas box and a pulled pork sandwich, both at €7.50, but I’d already had two breakfasts by this point – one in the Hilton Gatwick’s lounge and one in My Lounge.

For comparison, pictured below is the Club Europe meal I got from British Airways on my return flight. In typical BA fashion, I was offered a choice of a salad or a different salad – and both were served with a side salad. I’m not joking:

British Airways Club Europe meal from Barcelona

It was tasty though, so you’d need to buy one of the more premium Vueling options to get close to this quality.

Drink-wise, I was looking at €2.60 for a Nescafe instant cappuccino, €2.60 for tea, €2.60 for soft drinks, €3.60 for a can of San Miguel Especial, €5.60 for a quarter bottle of wine, €6 for 20cl of cava, €6 for spirits or €10 for a gin and tonic.

Conclusion

For under £65, I got:

Premium Security at Gatwick South
airport lounge access
a flight ticket to Barcelona with 10kg hand baggage allowance
Group 1 boarding
a front row seat
….. and a coffee and a piece of cake

Arguably you should add another £7-£8 for a bottle of prosecco and one of the posher food options if you want to recreate Club Europe catering.

I earned back 400 Virgin Flying Club from my lounge booking and probably 50 Avios from Vueling. Spookily for Vueling, the flight was on time too.

The next day I flew back on British Airways Club Europe in the same seat, 1C. It was an Avios redemption which cost 15,000 Avios plus £25. I had an empty middle seat and my meal was decent as you can see above. It was obviously better than my DIY Vueling ‘business class’ package, but I would happily do Vueling again if I could get the same seat.

As I wrote when I did my easyJet piece last year, the low cost carrier experience does not need to be low quality if you, erm, spend more money so that it isn’t so low cost any longer …. but £64 is not exactly expensive for everything I got.

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Category

British Airways and Avios, Vueling and Vueling Club

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Riku says:

16 Jan16 January 05:55

It doesn’t recreate club europe since you might have somebody sitting next to you in the middle seat which is one of the major differences between club europe and economy on BA.
It is like having an article “how getting six inches more legroom saved me 100 pounds” by explaining how to buy a BA economy seat plus a meal, lounge access and exit row seat instead of club europe.
The headline price (64 pounds) also doesn’t include luggage – which you didn’t need, but following similar logic you could have taken away the price of the meal and written “because I had a big breakfast at home I didn’t need to eat on the plane”. “recreate” implies you make something similar, not exclude the parts you yourself didn’t need.
- John says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 08:44
  
  Exactly, the only important things about CE for me are checked bags and tier points.
  
  Let’s look at each factor in Rob’s conclusion:
  1. I get premium security already…
  – which isn’t FREE when you pay £15 for lounge… you’re just paying £15 for lounge and premium security – there’s no way to access the lounge without going through security
  – it’s always TOTALLY empty on Thursday mornings except during school holidays (and you won’t be getting Vueling £30 fares at times when it’s likely to be busy)
  
  2. I get lounge already.
  – lounge is pointless if you stayed at the airport overnight and had a hotel breakfast, why would you leave the hotel earlier than necessary for an early morning flight, unless you wanted to do a lounge review.
  
  3. BA has 46kg hand baggage allowance (useful for smuggling gold ingots in your laptop bag).
  
  4. I don’t want to board in Group 1
  – no way am I putting 46kg in the overhead lockers so don’t need space.
  – cuts down on lounge time, if you were going to use the lounge. Don’t know about Vueling, but for BA flights once you have memorised the distance of every gate at LGW, you can comfortably turn up at the gate 20 minutes before departure and Group 1 is probably just about starting to board. (Remember the flight info screens at LGW are completely automatic so it means nothing when they flash FLIGHT CLOSING – use BA app)
  
  5. I don’t want to sit in row 1 (see point 4a.)
  
  6. No need to eat on board after the excellent restaurant breakfast at the Hilton Gatwick (starts at 0530, bargain £10 if you don’t get it free anyway) – assuming Rob used the Hilton lounge as he had another lounge to eat in.
Erico1875 says:

16 Jan16 January 06:01

If you had bought the extra seat for A N other. Checked in online then it would be a truer comparison.
- John says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 08:24
  
  A N Other would be offloaded when they fail to board.
  - Bagoly says:
    
    16 Jan16 January 08:43
    
    But the seat would remain vacant.
    So long as one is booking singles rather than returns, the objective is achieved.
    And paying the extra for A N Other plus their Allocated Seat is something that I can see being worthwhile, especially if there are two of you.
    So £110 rather than £64, but the final point in the conclusion is valid, and provides an additional option in the toolkits we all use to get premium experiences while not paying as much as the less savvy.
    - John says:
      
      16 Jan16 January 08:56
      
      You have a point. I think you’re saying, by the time someone doesn’t turn up at the gate, it’s too late to allocate the seat to someone else. So how does overbooking work for the airlines then?
      
      Anyway once ETIAS comes along you won’t be able to check in a fake person to Schengen destinations.
    - Stu N says:
      
      16 Jan16 January 10:01
      
      …not necessarily – if the flight is overbooked, someone who was about to be bumped would get 1B when Mr Other didn’t appear. Or it would be allocated to someone on standby or staff travel. Or the cabin crew would move someone they knew up from a middle seat at the back of the plane to a “better” seat. So not guaranteed, it’s not ANOther’s seat from the point they no-show.
C77 says:

16 Jan16 January 06:12

In your experience you were lucky to get a contact gate at BCN. Many Vueling flights do not (including LGW-BCN services). Your row 1 speedy disembarkation proactive then becomes somewhat diluted by the bus to the terminal which plonks you some way from the immigration booths and where you’re just as advantaged as anyone else who didn’t stump up for row 1. It’s a bit sensationalist to create a recreation of Club Europe article when you’re ultimately comparing apples with oranges and on top of this only picking services you are using. Everyone’s take will be different.
- Brian says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 09:26
  
  But Rob is recreating the Club Europe experience HE NEEDS. He doesn’t need luggage – and he wouldn’t have checked in luggage if he had flown CE. I’ve not one of these anti-criticism police officers who tend to pop up here whenever the site is criticised, but I don’t see the problem in this case. I never check in luggage, whichever class I’m travelling in, so for me this IS a fairly faithful recreation of Club Europe (apart from the middle seat).
  - John says:
    
    16 Jan16 January 10:05
    
    It’s all about clickbait these days, even the BBC does it, generating this sort of discussion is probably part of the aim.
    
    “Rob is recreating the Club Europe experience HE NEEDS” so a suitable headline should be “How I assembled my ideal CE experience using a Vueling base fare” but that doesn’t sound as enticing.
    - C77 says:
      
      16 Jan16 January 10:31
      
      So we’ll call it Club Europe Lite even though that doesn’t exist or form any meaningful comparison.
Neil P says:

16 Jan16 January 06:17

How much would the BA club experience have cost if you had purchased a cash ticket? I think your comparison is valid despite the obvious comments above because it reminds us that sometimes a package purchase is not always the best approach and that just buying what we need (or is important to us) gives greater value.
- Andrew says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 06:35
  
  But then you’re not ‘recreating’ club europe. As you say you’re just purchasing the parts of the experience which are important to you.
  - C77 says:
    
    16 Jan16 January 06:55
    
    +1
    Which is why everything is relative and not just the components one values on that particular trip. Club Europe is full service where you can’t opt out. It’s inclusive. Vueling offer the flexibility to opt in for what you want. And I get that. As does buying a Euro Traveller ticket on BA which IMO would have been a fairer more realistic comparison but I dare say the numbers probably didn’t stack up so sensationally for that.
    - Prins Polo says:
      
      16 Jan16 January 09:49
      
      What about 40 Tier Points, I didn’t see that recreated 🙄
      - Alan says:
        
        16 Jan16 January 10:02
        
        Indeed, although depends if you’re chasing BAEC status or not. I’ve now dropped from Gold to Silver and decided not worth trying to move back up. Return in F (using GUV2) to Oz will keep me at Silver for next year so that’s be done with any need to fly BA for the rest of my year!
    - Pedantic Pete says:
      
      16 Jan16 January 10:26
      
      There was no stylised speedmarque on the headrest either, therefore the whole idea that it recreates CE is a FRAUD!
      
      I don’t care that none of you value having a stylised speedmarque behind your head – it’s a part of the CE experience that you cannot recreate on Vueling.
- Lumma says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 06:40
  
  One way on Club Europe seems to start at €223 from Barcelona to Gatwick, so an avios ticket would be better value if wanting to exceed 1p per point
- C77 says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 06:45
  
  £306 one way or £222 round trip of a Saturday night is included. Lounge access included, fast track included, group 1 boarding included, middle seat free included, complimentary meal included, complimentary bar included, 2x32kg checked bags included. 2 items in the cabin included. Same day changes to an earlier flight included, avios and oneworld tier status included.
  
  So on the basis you’re doing a return including a weekend stay anywhere between £111 one way rising to £306 one way. If you’re going to make a sensible comparison add in the cost of 2 checked bags, the cost of an additional comfort seat to recreate the actual Club Europe experience and a realistic additional supplement for a couple of G&T’s, a couple of glasses of water, a chicken salad and a dessert and it would be nearer the mark. I’m guessing more than £111 at the lower end. All this being said it probably wouldn’t cost £306 either.
  - Alan says:
    
    16 Jan16 January 09:41
    
    Although on a weekend break I definitely would be travelling HBO, so wouldn’t add two bags on to my comparator.
- Ben says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 08:52
  
  It’s possible to fly CE with BA for £159 return provided you book via the Iberia website, so IB ticket on BA metal. BA stop flying from LGW to BCN after March (all flights will be consolidated to LHR) so from that point Rob’s formula is a good one.
  - Mike says:
    
    16 Jan16 January 10:50
    
    I believe you can also do BA CE BCN-LGW for 13,000 avios rather than 15,000 if you book via IB+?
Tom says:

16 Jan16 January 06:39

I LOVE the meat tapas box on Vueling. With a glass of rioja it beats anything on BA for a snack en route.
- Ben says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 08:53
  
  BA have that same tapas box as part of their buy on board product. (It’s clearly labelled ‘Not an M&S product’ in the menu!) I enjoy it with a G&T.
RIchy says:

16 Jan16 January 06:50

“at no point was my hand baggage weighed and at no point was I expected to fit it inside a measuring gauge”

Ryanair measures the passengers now?
- Genghis says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 07:00
  
  I had to read that a couple of times but it is fairly clear when read slowly
- Genghis says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 07:02
  
  I did have a flight in the Philippines once where all had to stand on the luggage scales at check in to “balance the plane”.
  - Adam says:
    
    16 Jan16 January 07:30
    
    Haha. Me too!! Think it was Cebu Air from Manila to Saigon.
    - Genghis says:
      
      16 Jan16 January 07:47
      
      Yep. Cebu Pacific from Cebu to Manila.
  - BSI1978 says:
    
    16 Jan16 January 08:10
    
    This is a comment/debate for another time no doubt but we seriously can’t be that far away from the time when passengers have to be weighed pre-flight, and/or confirm weight prior to purchasing?
    
    Arguably it reads as intrusive (and I for one as a big lad wouldn’t necessarily welcome it!) but the emphasis on bag weights etc. seems contradictory without a similar approach for passengers.
    - David says:
      
      16 Jan16 January 10:30
      
      I was checking in for an Air Baltic flight last year and my bag was 1.5kg over the 20kg I had paid for. I thought about turning round and pointing to the tubby guy in the check-in queue behind me, but decided against it…
    - Alex Sm says:
      
      16 Jan16 January 13:11
      
      +1 but I guess we have passed a point of no return on this with the current state of civil liberties and human rights debate
    - Lady London says:
      
      16 Jan16 January 18:34
      
      It’s not about weight on the plane it’s about what the airline can get away with charging for.
      Luggage is an inanimate object so airline can charge for it by weight.
      
      If they start trying to do that with people, then it’s more offensive and privacy-intruding so unless there’s a real safety reason (and there isn’t with big planes regularly carrying lots of people and luggage) the airlines won’t charge for people by weight.
      
      It’s all about the airlines finding more things they can charge for. But people weight… nope. They will think of something else to charge for first. Watch Ryanair everybody in the industry seems to copy every trend they start to nickle and dime passengers..
  - Alex Sm says:
    
    16 Jan16 January 13:08
    
    If you ever go to the Croydon Airport museum, you will see that it was a good practice at the dawn of British civil aviation as well!
- Brian says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 09:28
  
  The ‘it’ is fairly important here…
- Alan says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 09:42
  
  Haha love it!
- Nate1309 says:
  
  16 Jan16 January 22:42
  
  If they start weighing me I might as well buy 2 seats and spread my weight allowance 😂
Michael C says:

16 Jan16 January 07:11

That extra elbow space from a blocked BA middle seat does allow for a good laptop-working session.
Michael says:

16 Jan16 January 07:26

Useful article thanks