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Taken November 2005 from London, England (Heathrow Airport) - LHR to Bangkok (Don Muang International Airport) - BKK

This airline has the potential to be very good, but consistently lets itself down, by having many seemingly small faults, which, when added together, spoil the experience.

The limo transfer from our hotel was effortless, but on arrival at the pavement check-in, a facility allegedly available on their website, there were no staff on duty and so we had to carry our bags across a busy airport road to be checked in as with everyone else. This was 9am and not some unearthly hour.

The lounge at Heathrow was comfortable, but had no hot food.

The Heathrow-Bahrain sector was good with attentive cabin staff and excellent food.

The lounge at Bahrain was fantastic and on par with Malaysian Airlines KL lounge. A great selection of hot food was available and also unlimited champagne.

Bahrain-Bangkok was again a good flight with the cabin crew again very good. Food again superb.

The thing that let both these flights down was the in-flight Entertainment. If a passenger pays for Business Class it should be a given that they have video on demand and a choice of films. This was not available, but was advertised on their website, even pointing out that personal DVD players were in Business Class and First. Wrong. The choice of In Flight Entertainment was very poor, which for 14 hours in the air is unacceptable.

The return flights from Bangkok to Heathrow were very similar to the outbound flights. On time, with a very good cabin crew, but spoilt by small, seemingly petty things like items on the food menu being unavailable and no inflight magazines for anyone, so even if the choice of entertainment had been any good, no-one would have known what was on and when!

As I said earlier the airline could be very good, but for what appears to be a very misleading website and numerous annoying faults. Having flown with Malaysian Airlines Business Class, I suggest that the Senior Management of Gulf Air try them, and see what they should be aiming for. They are letting their very good cabin crew and superb Sky Chefs down, by offering a below par product.