I had heard all sorts of comments however, I can report that to my great relief only one was actually fact. This fact is that there is no alcohol onboard!!!!! We were lucky enough to fly business class and I cannot praise the staff enough at Heathrow and onboard, they were excellent.
We did have a minor mishap in London as Madeleine went to the aid of Amelie (by taking her to the toilet) and unfortunately put down her brand new bear (Snowy) that Grandma Pat had just bought. This missing passenger was not noticed until we were at the departure gate and this brought about great panic.
We checked bags to no avail, then we talked through all the things we had done on our way to the departure gate before we realised that Snowy was missing. Like Inspector Clouseau we eventually worked out that Snowy was probably in the upstairs toilet of the London Lounge. Action had to be taken (this was mainly in the form of me huffing and puffing) I asked one of the staff if it was possible to check the toilet (last known whereabouts of Snowy). Instantly mobile phones and radios were in operation, Snowy was located hanging around the ladies loo and someone ran off to pick her up.
About 5 minutes later there was a round of applause as Snowy was carried back into the departure gate and handed over to Madeleine, the look on her face was priceless and for this I owe all the members of the Royal Brunei Airlines ground crew who were on duty on the 19th November 2009 a huge thank you, you made a little girl very, very happy.
With the knowledge of no alcohol and all the trauma of the lost/not lost bear I was slightly concerned about my coping strategies for the next 15 hours. This needn't have concerned me at all. Once boarded and in our seats the crew brought the girls drinks and a bag of goodies along with another bag of colouring pencils and drawing pads. Followed by explanations of how the seats worked along with full information on the different movies available to them.
The take off was the next hurdle as we needed to adopt another adult (as a child cannot sit on their own when a plane takes off) and the seat formation was 2-1-2 (I was sitting in the single seat in the middle). Madeleine went straight to the other side of the row and adopted a very nice lady called Camilla who was on her way to New Zealand, also to this lady I would like to say thank you as by the time we landed in Brunei both my children had adopted her and were happy just to give me a passing glance!
We used RBA again when we went to Kota Kinabalu (KK) and it was great, went to the check-in desk and before giving them anything we got a "good morning Mr and Mrs Gray", bags got checked in and then 25 minutes later we were landing in KK, excellent stuff.
All in all our first experience was that of a (very) long flight but Royal Brunei made it very acceptable (even without having gin and tonic as my friend). Food was OK although I wouldn't be putting it on my Top 10 dining experiences, but it kept us going.
So I say if you need to use them as an airline then go for it.
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