STARLUX A350-900 Business Class Bottom Line Review

STARLUX Airlines is a new luxury airline headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. They currently offer two routes to the US: Taipei to Los Angeles and Taipei to San Francisco. They also partner with Alaska Airlines, which makes it possible to book STARLUX flights with Alaska Mileage Plan miles. In July 2023, I booked LAX to Taipei and back in business class for two (my wife and me) when it was briefly possible to book those flights for 60,000 Alaska miles each way. Today, the same flights are sometimes available for 75K Alaska miles each way, but more often you’ll see the flight priced at 165K miles one-way.

STARLUX A350-900 Business Class Bottom Line Review

STARLUX A350 business class offers a terrific combination of top-notch service, excellent seat design, huge & beautiful in-flight entertainment screens, and luxury extras like fitted mattress padding, pajamas, and slippers.

• How we found award space: In late July 2023, STARLUX awards between LAX and Taipei were briefly wide-open available for 60,000 points per person each way. I snagged these flights before the deal ended about two days later.
• How we booked it: My wife and I each had about 120,000 Alaska miles in our accounts. That wasn’t enough to book the entire round-trip from one account so I booked the outbound flight for both of us with my miles and the return flight with her miles.
• Cash Price: I didn’t look at the cash price at the time of booking, but I now see that STARLUX round-trip business class from LA to Taipei costs around $5,500. Since we paid 120,000 Alaska miles + ~$64 per person round-trip, we got a value of ~4.5 cents per mile.
• Route:
  • Outbound: Los Angeles (LAX) – Taipei (TPE)
  • Return: Taipei (TPE) – Los Angeles (LAX)
• Aircraft Flown: Airbus A350-900
• Ground Service at LAX:
  • Check-in: We checked-in online and connected from a Delta flight and brought only carry-on luggage. So, we never saw the in-person check-in.
  • Departure Lounge: Oneworld / Qantas International Business Lounge. I’m not a fan of this lounge: it’s very dark and often crowded. We have oneworld Emerald status, which would usually mean that we could enter the first class lounge rather than the business class lounge, but we would have had to have been flying a oneworld airline for that to work. Since STARLUX isn’t a oneworld airline, we could only get into the business class lounge. We could have alternatively gone to the Amex Centurion Lounge since we have Platinum cards, but we found a comfortable couch in the Qantas lounge and settled in.
  • Walk to gate: Our flight boarded from gate 221 which was a long walk from the Qantas lounge (about 15 minutes if you walk slowly), but LAX has golfcart drivers available to take passengers part of the way.
  • Boarding: The gate area was huge, with plenty of seating and so there were no crowds blocking the boarding area. Business class boarding was efficient and easy.

• Ground Service at TPE:
  • Check-in: STARLUX operates flights to the U.S. out of TPE terminal 2. We had to ask the information desk to find the STARLUX counter (aisle 8, if I recall). STARLUX had separate lines for business and first class. There was no wait to check in for business class. We checked our bags for the return flight.
  • Departure Lounge: STARLUX has a new and very nice (if you like sci-fi, which I do) spaceship themed “Galactic Lounge” in terminal 2. Many of the food and drink offerings are local to Taiwan, which is a great touch. Unfortunately, we had just had a huge meal before coming to the airport so we didn’t try any of the lounge food.
  • Walk to gate: The departure gate was very close to the lounge.
  • Boarding: Business class boarding was efficient and easy.

• Business Class Seat: The seats are comfortable and stylish. All of the seats have privacy doors, and middle seats have privacy partitions to maintain privacy both to your right and left. In fact, the privacy partition worked a little too well: when we slid it open it was still not easy to see each other unless we were both sitting upright. We found the seats very comfortable for both sitting and sleeping. At bed-time the flight attendants made up our seats with fitted padding. And, unlike most business class padding, this was thick enough to make the seat actually pretty comfortable as a bed! Storage options are decent, but not great — about the same as found in most modern business class seat designs.
• In-Flight Entertainment: Very good. The screens are huge and bright. The movie and TV show selection was fine, but not nearly as extensive as I’ve seen on some other airlines.
• Internet: Internet is free for business class passengers, but it was slow and unreliable.
• Food and Beverage: Surprisingly, in my opinion the food was just okay. It was fine, but nothing jumped out as particularly good or great. I heard that the mid-flight burger was very good, but I didn’t try it. I didn’t try any of the alcohol options, but they do offer very cool sounding cocktails that I expect are very good. Another bright spot: the coffee was excellent. I ordered cappuccinos and my wife ordered lattes. Both were terrific.
• Service: Service was terrific. Flight attendants were extremely attentive and quick to respond to any requests I made. At bed-time they made up our seats with very comfortable fitted padding. The only very minor service issue was that they were rarely proactive about removing trash. On both flights I often moved trash from my side table to my food tray table so that it would be removed with whatever food or drink items I was finished with. My wife experienced the same issue and so I know that it wasn’t just me. The service otherwise was so great that I have to imagine that they made a deliberate decision to favor avoiding interrupting passengers over clearing trash. Anyway, it’s such a minor thing that I definitely wouldn’t worry about it.
• Would I choose to fly it again? You bet! We had two excellent flights and would be very happy to fly STARLUX again.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Beautiful cabin & seats
• Fantastic service
• Seats are very comfortable for sitting
• Seats are very comfortable for sleep
• Bedding includes fitted mattress pad thick enough to actually make a difference
• Suites have doors
• All business class passengers are automatically given slippers & pajamas
• Massive high quality entertainment screens
• Excellent headphones
• Entertainment screens can be paired with bluetooth headphones
• Wireless charging
• All business class passengers get free in-flight internet

Cons

• Food was just okay.
• Suites are a little too private for couples travelling together even when the partition is opened.
• I’d prefer more seat storage
• In-flight internet was slow and spotty (we lost internet occasionally)
• In-flight entertainment did not offer as many English-language movies and TV shows as is found on many other carriers.
• Removing trash didn’t seem to be a priority

How STARLUX compares to Qatar QSuites

Before flying STARLUX , my favorite business class experience was with Qatar’s QSuites (see my QSuites review here). So, how did STARLUX compare?

• STARLUX’s boarding process at LAX was way better than Qatar’s confusing business class boarding at JFK.
• The quality of the flight attendant service was similarly great, but Qatar’s was slightly better because they proactively removed trash.
• Both flights offer great entertainment screens, but STARLUX’s was probably a bit bigger and nicer. On the other hand, I think that Qatar may have had a better TV and movie selection (I’m not 100% sure about that, though)
• Suite quality: tie. I found both the QSuites & STARLUX seats to be stylish and comfortable both for sitting and sleeping.
• Traveling together: QSuites was way better for enjoying the flight with a partner. In fact, at bedtime on QSuites, they removed the partition between seats completely and made up our seats as a double bed! Meanwhile, on STARLUX we could barely see each other when sitting and definitely couldn’t see each other when laying down.
• Food: QSuites was better.

Overall, if I had to pick a winner, I’d go with QSuites. That said, they’re both fantastic business class options.

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Seat and Cabin

Dining

Menu Taipei to LAX

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