Hello from Algeria, as I flew Air Algerie’s Airbus A330-900neo business class on the 6hr50min flight from Montreal (YUL) to Algiers (ALG). As y’all know, I like to fly “interesting” airlines, and I try to approach them with reasonable expectations.

I’ve gotta be honest, I hadn’t heard many good things about Air Algerie over the years, though the airline is modernizing its fleet, so I was curious to give the carrier a try, as it has been on my list for a long time . An airline having a bad reputation is no deterrent for me! While I came in with low expectations, the airline still managed to be significantly worse than I was anticipating.

Look, I don’t want to be dramatic. Obviously any flat bed business class is better than economy. But Air Algerie generally has very high business class fares, and the soft product was just so poor across the board. Off the top of my head, in my over five million miles of flying, I can’t think of ever having a worse business class soft product on a long haul flight.

On the plus side, at least the company is consistent — it’s clear that management puts about as much thought into the passenger experience as the crews do! In this post I’d like to share some initial thoughts, and then soon I’ll have a full review.

Let’s start on a positive note — I flew on an Air Algerie Airbus A330-900neo in a special livery, and I thought that was mighty cool. That’s just about where the good news about the flight ends, unfortunately. Man, those people in the Montreal Airport terminal got the best deal of all — they managed to experience the best part of Air Algerie without spending a cent.

While Air Algerie is taking delivery of factory fresh A330neos , that’s not what my plane was. Instead, I flew on an ex-Air Belgium A330neo that the airline acquired at the beginning of the year ( ah, Air Belgium, good memories! ). Air Algerie clearly did nothing to actually customize the interiors, so you really have no clue what airline you’re flying on based on the cabin.

This plane has a staggered configuration, so it’s comfortable enough, and I was in a “true” window seat.

However, the cabin was in rough condition, and it’s clear that zero effort is put into maintaining the interiors. But anyway, the hard product is the least of Air Algerie’s problems.