Today we will be exploring Korean Air’s Long Haul business class from Seoul to Singapore. The seat,
the layout, the lounge, the food and an unexpected bump in the road,
we’ll see it all. So let’s get into it, welcome to Seoul.
If you’d like to know the exact fare that I paid or my next five videos in queue, please check
out the description below and if you’re new here, hi there and welcome, my name is Kevin.
You’ve found yourself on a channel that takes unbiased travel content seriously.
I make airline trip reports, high end hotel reviews and cruise tours as well.
I always film without the company’s knowledge to be sure I get a true
experience and give you nothing more than my honest unbiased opinion.
We are currently in the early portion of a trip that is taking me to eleven
countries and I just arrived from Nagoya now heading to the Korean Air lounge here
in their terminal which is used for Korean Air as well as their fellow SkyTeam members.
As I mentioned in my last Korean Air video and as the thumbnail for this video suggests,
something strange did in fact happen on this flight that I’ve never had happen on
a flight before, I promise it’s not just click bait. We’ll get into that in a bit.
For now, let’s enjoy some apron views since the
air quality is only going to go downhill from here.
Korean Air uses Terminal 2 here at Seoul’s Incheon airport. Terminal 2 is currently
being expanded and due to that, there are quite a few parts of the terminal blocked
off- that’s not at all a problem, but the lack of signage for the lounge certainly is.
I was really wandering around for a good 10 minutes before I was even
sure I was heading in the right direction to get to the lounge.
Anyway, here we are. The lounge felt a bit underwhelming. It was clean, bright and had
lots of seating, but at the end of the day, it was just a big room with a bunch of chairs in it.
Not really a complaint, but I just expect more from East Asian carriers in their flagship
lounges. But perhaps after that Korean Air Lounge in Nagoya, I should have been better prepared.
There was an eclectic, but actually really tasty variety of foods on offer with hot dishes,
salads and some sandwiches as well. The hot dishes could have been kept a bit neater though.
Soft drinks and coffees are self service and anything with a proof
is available from behind the fully stocked bar.
The lounge does have shower suites which were big enough but the amenities were a bit lacking.
While I was in there there must have been a bank of flights land because
literally what felt like minutes later I came out and found a packed lounge.
I decided to skip the crowds and just head to the gate a bit early.
Korean Air has a sizable fleet of 164 aircraft, 32 of which are part of their cargo fleet.
For passenger destinations they currently fly to nearly 130 cities with really strong
presences in Europe and North America and a surprisingly week showing to Australia.
Since 2018 Korean Air has been in a joint venture with Delta for their trans-pacific
networks. Similar to how the British Airways American Airlines trans-atlantic venture works,
the Korean Delta tie up involves profit sharing and schedule and price coordination,
which is why Delta has relatively speaking a ton of flights to Seoul and why you’ll often
see your connecting flight is with Korean Air to one of their Asian destinations.
Incheon gets loads of praise for being one of the world’s best airports. I agree that it is
bright and clean and beautiful and nicely laid out, but I do feel like I’m missing something.
I just don’t know how this is supposed to be on the same level as the likes of Singapore Changi,
when in reality it reminds me a lot of Sao Paolo Guarulhos Terminal 3.
And don’t get me wrong, I really like that terminal. But they’re just kinda big empty
boxes. Tell me if there are some attractions of special features that I just completely missed.
Our boarding was delayed a bit so I just walked down to the end of the concourse.
I was very excited to book this pair of flights after my Zip Air flight to Singapore was canceled
since both of my Korean Air flights would feature APEX Suites which are one of my favorite business
class products. Today’s flight is operated by a 777-300ER and while Korean Air does have a number
of them with their older sub par business class, since I booked this just a week ahead of time,
I was pretty hopeful that it would remain with the APEX configuration and it did.
Boarding began and we made our way through the massive gate houses down to the jet bridge. As
for today’s flight stats, we ended up taking off nearly an hour late, heading up to 36000 feet for
this six hour flight down to Singapore, arriving seventeen minutes behind schedule after midnight.
Stepping on board I was greeted by, I believe the purser and I passed through 2 rows of First Class,
true first class this time, on my way to the large Business Class cabin.
I was in 14 Juliet for tonight’s flight.
The business class cabin is split in two. The first row is in front of door two,
with the first class cabin and those seats are reserved generally for elite Korean Air members.
The bulk of the 42 business class seats are between door two and three.
One very interesting thing about Korean’s cabin is that on 777s, you can install APEX suites in
a 2-3-2 configuration. It does create the dreaded middle seat, but it’s still all aisle access. This
is the configuration that Japan Airlines uses. Korean however chose a 2-2-2 configuration and
oddly enough, by my own measurements, the beds of Korean Air and Japan Airlines are exactly the
same width at 25”. Korean’s arm rests and aisles are literally just that much wider.
I can confirm these are in fact the exact same seats as I had on the
787 coming here from Nagoya, just with a much wider center arm rest.
Upon boarding, each seat had a large pillow, a fleece blanket,
bottle of water, menu and slippers waiting along with headphones. The seat controls
and IFE are just to the side of your leg and there is also a universal outlet and USB port.
While the inner armrest flips up for extra storage, in this case quite a bit- the
outer arm rest is fixed in place and only lowers when the bed is put into flat mode.
Above the foot rest is a decent sized storage cubby and although there is space for baggage
under the foot rest, they didn’t allow my backpack to remain there on this flight.
Same as last flight, the headphones are big and cheap- whereas the pillow is big and floppy.
The blanket, besides the I suppose premium embroidered on it, just felt cheap and scratchy.
While this one is larger, there are plenty of airlines that give
out fleece blankets in economy these days. I do appreciate the open toe slippers though.
If you’re wondering how these seats work in their staggered configuration. On the window side,
the aisle seat has this narrow pass through that technically gives them access to a window,
though it doesn’t always line up this well. More or less that equivalent amount of space
is used in front of the aisle seat to give the window seat freedom of access.
Pre departure drinks were passed out along with a packaged snack mix.
Unfortunately they didn’t install air vents in their 777s though.
The K-Pop safety videos began and we pushed back with a view of a beautiful 747-8 just next to us.
So, let me set the stage quickly.
While one of my phones was attached to the window I was recording short clips of the plane’s camera
with my other phone. This was the scene just as we were about to finish pushing back.
Then here we are, siting here for a bit while the pilots perform their checklists. At this time, I’m
no longer recording the built in camera on the IFE monitor. Everything seems normal and then this.
I’m glad you can see the wing and the engine moving because when I tell you
it felt like we had just been dropped from 50 meters in the sky, I’m not exaggerating-
except, we were standing completely still. I’ll play it again and interestingly enough
you can hear creaking just before the loud bang as if something gave out under pressure.
So right after that, I looked at the camera again and saw the tug just off to the side
in front of the aircraft. The tug and us stayed put for around 25 minutes.
After around 10 minutes a flight attendant passed through the cabin,
I asked her what it was and she said, “don’t worry it’s normal”...
Ok, well I’m happy for someone to explain it away to me, but I’ve been on hundreds of
flights before and I’ve never felt anything even remotely as forceful as that while standing still.
By this point I was convinced we were going to return to the gate
but eventually the tug pulled away and so did we. I’m by no means knowledgeable about it, but I know
that some tugs lift the front of the aircraft off of the gound. My only thought at first was,
did it drop us when it was putting us down? I discredited this right away simply because it
was way too forceful to be explained by that. Also, that creaking certainly sounded like it
was coming from the aircraft itself, not from a tug which was very far ahead of my seat.
Anyway, let me know what you think it was. At one point the captain explained the delay by blaming
incoming air traffic control, which is believable due to the visibility, but since the tug was still
in front of us during the entire delay, I just don’t believe it. I’ll note the aircraft did
return to Seoul on time and didn’t have any major delay in the 2 months after my flight.
Anyway, let’s get this show on the road. The spool up and take off are coming up now.
Not a whole lot to see on the way up. Our route would take us more
or less direct to Singapore with the exception of staying east of Taiwan.
The wider middle section does at least make for a more reasonably
sized side table which can just hold an ipad. Soon after takeoff, dinner service started.
First up we were offered a scallop amuse bouche.
Here is the full food and drink menu for the flight. Please note the red prices
are my addition to the graphic to give you an idea of the value of wines available on board.
For starters we had a smoked salmon appetizer with a lemon sauce. This felt very United to be honest.
For the main dish I went for the Korean option, which visibly surprised the flight attendant.
It was Korean spicy beef with vegetables served with side dishes.
That description is about as lively as the interior color scheme in here.
That said, the main dish was excellent and was a nice departure from what is
sometimes a bevvy of quite heavy dishes on offer on some airlines.
For dessert there was a small fruit plate as well as an exciting vanilla ice cream.
Bathrooms were kept spotless throughout the flight and had Atelier Cologne products on hand.
Korean’s In flight entertainment, when it comes to newer western movie selections,
is relatively limited, but the system itself is responsive, using the remote next to your seat.
As for the main event, the seat went into a wonderfully flat and
wide bed with no foot cubby or knee restrictions.
You can also easily raise the partition between you and your
neighbor for added privacy while sleeping.
About an hour before landing, a light meal was served, in this case a chicken pesto sandwich
along with some pickles. This was surprisingly really tasty and randomly reminded me of how bad
Singapore Airlines’ equivalent snack sandwiches are. They really need to try Korean’s offering.
Soon enough after, we were getting ready for our final approach into Singapore.
We approached from the north before swinging a uey over Batam and landing from the south southwest.
And like always,
that Singapore humidity let’s itself be known pretty quickly.
And that is that. Obviously my biggest gripe is wondering what the heck hit us or dropped
us or whatever that was. Otherwise it was a pretty standard regional flight. Though
sometimes I do need to remind myself that these flights are just as long as New York to London,
in which case I do think an Amenity Kit would be nice, just saying.
I really do hope you enjoyed this trip report today. If you did, please be sure to give this
video a big thumbs up and subscribe so you don’t ever miss a beat. We are now
in three times a week territory and coming up this week we have the full tour and review of
the Costa Smeralda as well as a short flight on Firefly from Singapore’s Secret Airport.