Beond: The new business-class only airline flying from London Heathrow to the Maldives from December 2026
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Could you be tempted by the prospect of an exclusive 44-seat aircraft?
All-business-class carrier Beond is set to take passengers in some luxury to the Indian Ocean. Rhys Jones, aviation editor for Head for Points, has sampled the cabin. We also talk about Relax Row, the clever three-seat flat bed in economy that Air New Zealand conceived and United Airlines has now picked up.
And will there ever be a proper flat bed experience in economy or premium economy?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. I am in the excellent |
| 0:08.1 | company of Reese Jones, who you will know friend of the podcast, aviation editor of the frequent flyer |
| 0:15.3 | website, Head for Points. And the reason, Reese, I've come to see you, is because you know what it's going to be |
| 0:23.8 | like flying on a business class only jet from London Heathrow to the Maldives, because you've |
| 0:31.7 | actually seen the second-hand easy jet plane they're going to be using. That's right. I was at the launch event in |
| 0:39.2 | Munich probably about two years ago for Beyond this brand new airline startup. You know, |
| 0:44.9 | most airline startups are just paper airlines. They never actually launch. Beyond has actually |
| 0:50.0 | managed to launch. Has two aircraft has been flying for a year and a half, two years or so, |
| 0:55.3 | and now they're finally bringing their all-business class service to London from the Maldives. |
| 1:00.3 | The current routes, I believe, are from Zurich, from Milan and from Munich, and the aircraft |
| 1:07.8 | itself, fascinating X EasyJet, Airbus A319. It may be an X EasyJet A319, which you're |
| 1:17.1 | used to seeing on all sorts of routes from Luton and Gatwick, but on the inside it's had a total |
| 1:22.0 | refurbishment. So all the EasyJet seats have gone. There's not a speck of orange. And in their place, they've got, I think it's about 44 or so business class lie flat seats in a 2-2 configuration, only 44 passengers. |
| 1:37.0 | You say lie flat seats. I've read your very good review in Head for Points. I got the sense that it maybe wasn't a lie-flat seat as people would |
| 1:47.2 | know them perhaps in British Airways, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines where you are very much |
| 1:52.7 | lying flat. It's not a cutting-edge, lie-flat business-class seat. I mean, we've moved beyond |
| 1:58.2 | stepping over our neighbours in most business class cabins now. |
| 2:02.0 | We kind of standardised around one-to-one cabin seating with direct-hile access. So in that sense, |
| 2:07.6 | it's not quite the cutting edge, but it's still nonetheless a very comfortable seat. It reclines fully. |
| 2:12.7 | It's a little bit shorter than you might expect. So if you're on the taller side like me, |
| 2:16.7 | I'm 6'2, you might not be able to fully stretch out head to toe. So if you're on the taller side like me, I'm 6'2, you might not be |
| 2:18.4 | able to fully stretch out head to toe. But if you're a side sleeper like me, that shouldn't be a |
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