For this seat, on this route, for this price- Air Premia hands down cannot be beat.
Hi there, my name is Kevin. This channel came from a love of traveling,
a love of the full process and the journey itself. I feature airline trip reports and
high end hotel reviews from all over the world. My reviews aren’t sponsored by
airlines or hotels so you can be sure to get my unbiased honest opinion. Am I an expert?
You can decide. Am I fair? Yea, I am. Let’s get into it, welcome to Saigon.
If you’d like to know the exact fare that I paid for my flight or my next five videos in queue,
please check out the description below. First of all, holy hell- I cannot remember
the last time I saw such a chaotic terminal- like, in my life. But yes, this is how it is
just about every night here with the largest international bank of flights of the day, we’ll
get into that more, for now let’s try to weave our way through the crowds just to get inside.
And welcome to this new series- or well, this new trip.
The longest I’ve ever taken in fact. Over the next 35 or so videos, we are going
to explore 21 Hotels and take 15 flights on 12 different airlines so let’s get started.
Today we are going to be flying up to Seoul and we can thank Flight Radar 24 for this flight,
why? Some month’s earlier I’d just been looking at the app, clicked on the plane overhead and
it was Air Premia, what the heck was that- I had no idea. So I searched around and when I
saw how different and cheap the airline was, I decided to tack on a Korea and Japan leg
to this trip originally starting in Singapore. If you are flying out of Saigon internationally
between 10:00-2:00am, there is one critical thing you need to bring with you and that is patience.
Anyway, Air Premia, they are the newest airline flying this route and also the newest carrier in
South Korea. They call themselves Korea’s first Hybrid Carrier- according to them,
offering full service airline amenities for low cost airline prices. It’s a seemingly
magical combination that many airlines have failed to make successful in the past.
Air Premia only had 787 wide body aircraft, four of them at the moment with one more on order.
The iconic shape of the 787 window is actually what makes up their logo, so I’d say they’re
pretty committed to Boeing at this point. I had a very quick stop at the Apricot
Lounge and just decided to head to the gate early since it was pretty busy.
So, Air Premia currently fly to six destinations with Newark service having started in May and
Frankfurt in June. Saigon was one of the very first though and I’d like to dive into that a bit,
because even I had absolutely no idea how massive the market between
Korea and Vietnam is- more specifically just between Seoul Incheon and Vietnam.
Let me give you a bit of context as best I can. At the time of writing, if you take all
of the flights between New York’s JFK airport and Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego,
it amounts to an average of 52 flights per day. That’s a lot. These are very heavy hitting
routes in the US, especially to LAX and SFO. Between Seoul and Vietnam on the other hand,
there are currently… also, 52 daily flights on a whopping 10 different airlines. Let’s keep in
mind that we are also still not at precovid levels yet. This is a gigantic market and there is plenty
of the pie to share. In fact, the largest carrier in Korea, Korean Air welcomes the competition
especially in the US since it adds competition and will only help their case in merging with Asiana.
Heading to the gate now, we are in the middle of the nightly rush which has 24 international
flights over around three hours, with 17 of them going to Japan or Korea.
They offer Economy and Premium Economy on all of their flights- which They refer to as Premia
35 and Premia 42- referring to the seat pitch of the classes respectively. For comparison,
29-30 is standard pitch for lower cost carriers and 31-32 is standard for full service carriers.
35 is literally unheard of, unless you’re paying for extra legroom seats like Delta’s Comfort+
for example. As for Premium Economy, the 42” advertised is also more than the standard 36-39
inches for Premium Economy. The only other airline I know of that offers 42” in premium economy is
Japan Airlines. Much
more so than typical carriers, Air Premia focuses on it’s specific seat offerings
a lot in it’s advertising. After all, they named their classes after their seat pitch.
It would be as if Qatar Airways renamed their business class, the entire class, as Q-Suites.
We were a bit delayed due to a “technical reason” but ended up boarding just around
10 minutes behind schedule with Premia 42 passengers given priority.
For tonight's flight stats, we ended up taking off around 20 minutes behind schedule and made our way
up to 37000 feet for our 2200 mile flight to seoul where we would end up landing 25 minutes early.
Did you feel that foreshadowing earlier, about the seats? Yeah, so as I stepped on board, something
was immediately odd to me… these were not their seats- the handsome dark blue, modern seats they
advertise, these were Norwegian Air seats. And so they were. Of the four 787s that Air
Premia currently has, 2 of them are new and two are five years old, coming from Norwegian
Air- and they didn’t install their own cabin on them. So, 50% of their fleet has these cabins.
There’s nothing particularly wrong about these seats, they’re still premium economy seats still
have more or less the same legroom, but it’s just a much older version.
The seat was nicely outfitted with a few amenities such as slippers
and had easy to use controls for both the entertainment, leg rest and seat recline.
And they had overhead vents which I was very happy about.
The pillow and blanket were standard economy issue but they were clean, the blanket was
soft and since the seat next to me was the only empty one in the cabin, I had doubles.
Pre Take off drinks were offered in a snazzy branded paper cup. Water and juice were on offer.
For premium economy, the head phones were decent quality and still had the
plastic on them which I left intact to give someone else the pleasure of peeling it off.
Each seat also had a universal outlet and legrest.
The legrest, with a bit of force, adjusted to fit a variety of leg lengths,
but was a pain in the neck to put back in place without it slowly creeping open.
There’s also an adjustable headrest. Overall, it’s a comfortable seat, my only gripe for taller
travelers is that since the IFE monitors are in the center console, the arm rests are quite long,
as in nearly past your knees, so sitting with legs crossed was a bit uncomfortable.
Pushback began as did their slightly creepy safety video which seemed to be animated in 1998.
I’m considering to start a series of Trip Reports titled, Revenge Airlines. The founder of Air
Premia is the former executive from Jeju Air. The same, “fine, I’ll leave but I’m going to start my
own airline” has also lead to Taiwan’s Starlux, India’s Akasa Air and I’m sure quite a few more.
We’d be doing a standard take off today from Saigon, but I do love sitting in the back of
a 787 cabin on take off, the windows are so big you can watch it from both sides. The spool up,
take off and airport stats are coming up next.
By the way, I simply haven’t had time to work on them recently, but I will begin posting again on
my Roam Above channel linked in the description below, hopefully this summer. Over there you
can see all of my full take off and landing clips as well as some full flights. There are
already plenty of videos there now, but I’ve got probably 50 in my backlog to post there as well.
Our northeasterly route to Seoul would end up being a painfully
short red eye and I swear even before take off 90% of the plane was asleep.
Not that I’d be able to do that anyway right now, I wish I had that sleep on/off switch programing.
The primary meal served would be done before landing, so I ordered a snack from their
buy on board menu. It was perfectly fine- and can't ever go wrong with honey butter almonds.
Let’s take a look at the on board entertainment. Another trip report I watched from when the
airline just launched showed they only had Korean titles, surely that must have changed by now… but
no. You’re going to Korea and you’re going to watch a Korean movie whether you like it or not.
At least they did have a decent flight map program.
The cabin lighting began it’s program as nature began it’s own- and I’ll note that I love
the two colors of the brand and specifically because they tell you the names on board-
and they’re really accurate descriptions. Morning deep blue and Sunrise Orange.
Here you can see the shape you’ll need to contort your body into in
order to get out of your seat when the seats in front of your are reclined.
Making me wonder if these really are 42” of pitch. By the way, I always travel with a laser
measurer but since I didn’t think I’d need it on this flight, it was buried in my spinner bag.
While waiting for breakfast to roll down the aisle, I got a look at the
restrooms. Standard stuff, with a couple extra amenities for Premium Economy.
I’m curious if on their longer flights whether they give out a small amenity
kit or something- similar to what I received on French Bee.
Breakfast was a choice of congee or a frittata and I went with the frittata. Might I add I’d
like to start a frittata petition with the mission to replace all on board
omelets with frittatas because they just reheat so much better. My thanks to any airline that serves
them. Anyway, it was a very tasty breakfast though the serveware and plastic utensils did make it all
feel pretty cheap. Even just upgraded utensils would elevate the entire feel of this meal.
As the turbulence subsided, the sun began to rise as we began our approach into Seoul.
Giving us plenty of that sun rise orange. Something about sun rises and sun sets from
the air in and around Japan and South Korea… they’re just so crystal clear.
We would be approaching Seoul from the southeast. Enjoy the final descent.
New trip, so let’s switch this up a bit. When creating a hotel or flight review,
what do you think are some of the most important characteristics about those reviews?
To me, to make a truly unbiased review, two things need to be true. First, I need to pay
a fare or rate that is publicly available and receive no special treatment or compensation.
Second, I need to film anonymously. If I reveal my identity today, that means an airline or a hotel
might recognize me tomorrow and lay on the VIP treatment extra thick. I don’t want that.
So rest assured that this video today is exactly what I say it is, an unbiased review.
A relatively quick taxi and off we were to end up on the tail end of a pretty
long immigration line. No complaints from me though with views like this along the way.
So, Air Premia, it is a very promising prospect,
but whether they’re successful is going to be a wait and see game.
They say they plan to have 10 aircraft by the end of the next year and will be growing aggressively,
but right now you cannot book connecting tickets on their website. Despite how cheap this flight
was, The absolute cheapest round trip Seoul to Newark fare I could find was around $1500 which
is frankly, isn’t that cheap with Air Canada and American offering Premium economy tickets
for the same price. For the right price though, I’d be more than happy to fly Air Premia again.
I really do hope you enjoyed this trip report today, if you did please be sure to
click that thumbs up button and subscribe with notifications on so you don’t miss my upcoming
videos which will include the Park Hyatt and Andaz in Seoul, a T’way A330 flight to Tokyo
and the Okura and Hyatt Centric in Tokyo. Oh, and thanks for watching until the end.