The World's Best Business Class Experiences Rated by Region

[gallery ids="147462,147461,147450"] After trying to find the World’s Best Business Class cabins, we can honestly declare that we are exhausted and in need of a long flight to a pretty island somewhere—in a fully-flat bed. However, we’ll settle for sharing the fruits of our labor with you. All business classes have dramatically improved in the last 20 years. In fact, yesterday’s First Class cabins would like to formally apologize for their extreme inadequacy. We have trouble imagining how airlines will continue to leap-frog past this product, but surely the industry will come up with something. It always does. These high standards made Business Class a bear to rate. You can blame British Airways for making Business Class a complicated luxury. BA introduced the whole idea of sleeping comfortably on a flat-bed in Business Class back in 2000, in response to a series of volleys between BA and Virgin Atlantic to best each other's products that started back to the 1990s. BA kicked it into high-gear with a Business Class you could actually sleep in, arriving refreshed on the other side. This was a concept completely unheard outside of First Class (and that was a British Airways innovation too, along with Air France). Virgin Atlantic’s own Upper Class service at the time was far above what other airlines offered around the world (what we call the souped-up La-Z-Boy model of aircraft seating), but its Upper Class angled down, which made sleeping less comfortable. How the Skies Have Changed Today, lie-flat is a minimum requirement in Business Class. At least, it is for us. There were so many airlines to rate that we discounted any product which had angled beds, and no armchairs need apply. Trying to rate today’s Business Class, however, is a bit like herding geese. The aircraft interiors wars have escalated and some airlines have already introduced, but not put into service, or put into limited service, products which are far above their current standard. We had to make the difficult decision of whether to rate these airlines. To draw a line somewhere (and we hope we put it in the right place), we rated only those airlines whose current in-service product meets the minimum requirements (i.e., fully-flat bed) and rated them on their newest product only if it is flying right now. If it’s still in the drawing room, sorry. It will count in your favor next year. We had to differentiate between these various products