What Is Korean Air’s Old 777 Business Class Like?

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

I’ve spent some time with friends and family in Seoul over the past week, and just last Friday I detailed my (unexpected, given the circumstances) reseating in Korean Air 747-8 first class on the way to Incheon Airport. On the same ticket I had to get back home, and just now I did so on a Korean Air 777-300ER. While I would’ve wanted to get on one of Korean Air’s frequencies with Apex Suites, the flight we ended up booking was more suited to our schedules by far, so I was happy to try out Korean Air’s older product on the way home. While I’ve done so on the Korean Air A330 and 777-200, it’s been a couple of years, and I’ve never flown Korean Air’s 777-300ER.

Korean Air Boeing 777-300ER Business Class 

Once again the first class cabin was opened up for business class seat selection on this flight. However, they only decided to open up the cabin to full fare passengers, and we were booked into the lowest fare bucket (while I’ve written that you shouldn’t take BS from an airport officer when it comes to managing your travels, this is a reason I can completely get behind). So while I didn’t get to sit there, I still got to photograph the first class seat, which I’ll include in the full review.

With that, how was my flight? Good, actually – I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Continue reading “What Is Korean Air’s Old 777 Business Class Like?” →

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Review: JetBlue A320 Economy Class New York to New Orleans

~ Jason ~ 1 Comment

In April of this year, I took a trip with my school to New Orleans. On the way there, we flew with JetBlue. While JetBlue gets a lot of attention for their phenomenal “Mint” premium product, their regular Economy product hasn’t been covered as extensively. As such, I thought it would be interesting to report back on my experience with what is considered to be one of the best Economy experiences in the United States. 

We arrived at JetBlue’s Terminal 5 at JFK around four hours before our flight. Since we were travelling in a large group, we were given a small roped off check-in area in order to streamline what would have been an undoubtedly messy process. The ground staff weren’t the friendliest but were patient enough when it came to dealing with eighty high-schoolers.

Security was a breeze and the TSA was uncharacteristically friendly. Afterwards, I grabbed some lunch and roamed the terminal with some of my friends, before heading to our boarding gate.

IMG_5252JetBlue A320 at New York JFK Airport 

When we arrived at the gate, the A320 waiting to take us to New Orleans was already waiting for us. I appreciate that JetBlue has pimped out its gate areas with plenty of power ports and comfortable seating, which makes for quite a nice change especially when compared to some of the dumpier terminals at JFK… (Terminal 7, I’m looking at you).

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Cathay Pacific Changes Website Regions, Pisses Off Facebook…

~ Jason ~ Leave a comment

Cathay Pacific recently changed their website regions to reflect the Chinese government’s “One China” policy, renaming Taiwan to “Taiwan China”. This comes following orders from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, who recently sent notices to 44 global airlines to change their websites to explicitly reflect Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Tibet as parts of China. Airlines who did not comply would face unspecified sanctions.  Cathay Pacific, along with American Airlines, Delta and United, was one of the last airlines to make the change, doing so right before the CAAC’s deadline.

On Cathay Pacific’s website, Hong Kong is now explicitly listed as a Special Administrative Region, while Taiwan is now called “Taiwan China” (wtf?). In comparison, Cathay Pacific’s previous website menu listed Taiwan as a “region” of China but did not explicitly refer to Taiwan as a part of China. I guess that Cathay Pacific could hypothetically get away with not referring to Taiwan as “Taiwan, China”, but rather as “Taiwan China”, implying that it is not technically a part of China but rather another China…

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Korean Air’s 747-8 First Class Seat In 10 Pictures

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I detailed how I managed to “charter” the nose of a Korean Air 747-8 out for our family on business class tickets. We were incredibly lucky for everything to have worked out the way it did, and at the end I probably ticked something off my bucket list that I never thought I’d be able to – getting the entire family in first class and letting them see firsthand what our entire industry aspires to be able to do for pennies on the dollar. While obviously I’ll have a full review coming next week, this is the “teaser” post detailing the first class cabin. As for the soft product, I detailed this in my teaser post of the business class experience yesterday, as we still received business class service and catering.

Korean Air Boeing 747-8 First Class Cabin (not pictured: me silently screaming behind the camera)

Continue reading “Korean Air’s 747-8 First Class Seat In 10 Pictures” →

SO COOL: How Our Family Scored A 747 First Class Cabin To Ourselves On Business Class Tickets!

~ Alvin ~ 1 Comment

Earlier today I mentioned that I booked business class flying from Hong Kong to Seoul Incheon. I was booked on the 747-8, featuring Apex Suites in business class. It’s in my knowledge that it’s common for airlines to assign first class seats to frequent flyers booked in business class on select regional flights, and it’s also not impossible for non-frequent flyers to get these seat assignments as well (I’ve actually done some of these seat assignments for readers in the past). However, today was a series of lucky streaks that eventually got me flying in a first class seat from Hong Kong to Seoul Incheon on a Korean Air 747-8.

Happier than pretzel day in Korean Air first class!

I decided I’d share my story, as well as some tips for how you can get assigned a first class seat on a two-class-service airline (it was more or less pure luck that we had the cabin to ourselves, though).

Continue reading “SO COOL: How Our Family Scored A 747 First Class Cabin To Ourselves On Business Class Tickets!” →

What Is Korean Air’s 747-8 Business Class Like?

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Hello from Seoul! Today I flew Korean Air’s 747-8 from Hong Kong to Seoul Incheon. I can’t even begin to say how much we lucked out on this flight, and how it’s hands down the best flight I’ve ever had in my life. However, first of all I need to objectively review Korean Air’s business class product.

Korean Air Boeing 747-8 Hong Kong Airport

I’ve flown Korean Air’s business class many times in the past, and have sampled their angled flat business class product, as well as their fully flat business class product featured on most of their aircraft. Today I had the chance to sample and photograph their newest business class product, which is the Apex Suite. I’ve never flown the Apex Suite before, though people have christened it one of the world’s best business class seats.

As usual, you can expect a full review of Korean Air’s business class (or at least what I flew), but here’s my first impressions of the product.

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What’s It Like To Fly Cathay Pacific’s One-Stop Service to New York?

~ Jason ~ 1 Comment

I recently had the chance to fly on Cathay Pacific’s service from Hong Kong to Vancouver to New York. While I ordinarily would have chosen a non-stop service straight to New York or Newark, I needed to take advantage of the late departure time of the flight as well as the early morning arrival to catch a bus to my summer school.

Cathay Pacific Boeing 777-300ER Hong Kong Airport

While we’ve extensively reviewed Cathay’s long-haul Business Class product on the Boeing 777-300ER, I thought I would only report on the Vancouver connection experience and talk a little bit about the ways in which the experience was different from taking a non-stop flight.

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Cathay Pacific Starts Flights To Seattle

~ Alvin ~ 1 Comment

A month ago Delta announced that they would cease flights to Hong Kong. A long time ago I remember being fascinated by their fifth-freedom flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo, which continued on to Minneapolis. It ran on a Delta 767, which featured recliner seats in business class (this ended in 2012).

Delta Boeing 767 Osaka Airport

I was very excited when Delta announced that they’d be flying between Hong Kong and Seattle in 2014. At the time they were flying their A330, featuring reverse herringbone seats. They upgraded the flight in the meantime to a 777 (capacity wise, as the switch to herringbone seats for business class passengers was more of a downgrade from having reverse herringbone seats, in my opinion). I’ve never been to the US (cue gasps and death threats – a self-proclaimed travel blogger not having been to the US before???), though if there was a city where I’d want to start, it’d be Seattle, because of how welcoming and beautiful it seems, as well as the diverse population. However, as of last month Delta said they’d soon be ending flights between Seattle and Hong Kong as of October 4, 2018, so they’ll no longer serve Hong Kong at all.

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Skytrax 2018 Awards Announced – Here We Go Again

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

I’ve never put too much weight into Skytrax ratings. They’re mainly based on votes from people who have favouritism towards a single airline just because they’ve had a good experience on them before. Most of the people voting have never flown another airline in the same cabin class before.

That being said, it’s always exciting to see the opinions that the general public has towards airlines, which is why I continue to see and report on Skytrax’s rankings, despite the fact that I don’t actually value them at all. Additionally, while the rankings themselves are based on flawed data and results, the rankings actually have quite a large impact on airlines, as Skytrax rankings are quite highly-esteemed.

img_5506Lufthansa being a 5-star airline was probably the industry joke of the year

Today Skytrax released some rewards for this year’s winners in multiple categories. Having flown a number of airlines since this last happened, I’ve been quite…entertained by some of the rankings that Skytrax has released this year. Here’s a roundup of some of the thoughts that I have from Skytrax’s new rankings – for the full list of awards, click here.

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Thai Airways Introduces Yet Another Business Class Product

~ Alvin ~ 1 Comment

Thai Airways currently has more different business class products than any other airline. Their A330s, 747s, and select 777s feature angled flat seats (two unique types, actually), their newer 777s, A380s and A350s feature Solstys-style staggered business class seats, some of their 787s feature forward-facing fully flat business class seats, their other 787s feature reverse herringbone seats, and they still have an active 737 with recliner seats in business class.

Since Thai doesn’t operate any 787s to Hong Kong, the Hong Kong to Bangkok route is served exclusively with their planes with angled flat seats and Solstys-style staggered business class seats. I’ve had the chance to fly their A330 and 747 with angled flat seats, though haven’t tried their Solstys-style staggered business class configuration (I’ve flown a similar configuration on Hong Kong Airlines, who has a virtually identical seat apart from the finishes).

Thai Airways Boeing 747 Business Class Seat

Well, apparently someone went to Thai Airways’ CEO and said “you know what, Charamporn, I don’t think six unique business class configurations are enough for our airline. I think passengers would like less consistency, and more variety. Let’s introduce a seventh business class seat configuration, just to mix things up.”

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