Mini trip report - Seoul to Tokyo on JAL
This is part of a bigger trip around Asia, read more about this trip here.
Ticketing
This route is only 2 hours and between two major cities, so there’s lots of options, including budget airlines.
I tend to avoid budget airlines when abroad, simply because when travelling on these trips I tend to have a large suitcase with me, which is often a significant cost on a budget airline, meaning I might as well fly with a normal airline.
Plus of course, I want to collect points if I can. Ideally then I wanted to fly JAL as they’re the only One World airline operating in either South Korea or Japan. Unfortunately, there were no flights from Seoul’s main airport Incheon. But thanks to a random search on Google flights where I looked by city rather than airport I discovered a JAL flight, at the perfect time, going from Seoul’s regional airport, Gimpo. The cash fare for business class was not ridiculous so I put in the extra money and bought the ticket.
The airport
Located, conveniently, only 20mins drive from where I was staying in Seoul, Gimpo airport, being a smaller airport, is not quite as far out of town as the larger airport needed to be. On the morning of the flight I got up, called an Uber and I was at the airport in no time. Given this is a reasonably small, regional airport, I was checked in and through security pretty quick. The airport operates two terminals, one domestic and one international. I didn’t see any long-haul options on the departure boards, mostly routes into China, Taiwan and Japan. Since JAL only operates the occasional flight, they don’t have their own lounge, they have a deal with Korean Air, so I headed to their lounge. Given it’s all short haul here, there wasn’t any fancy facilities, just some simple food and drink offerings (including alcohol) and a lot of seats, in a very unusual set of rows. Clearly designed for lots of single business travellers.
The flight
The aircraft was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, it’s not uncommon to have wide bodied aircraft on short haul routes in Asia, particularly between big cities. This meant I had the luxury (for short haul) of a JAL Sky Suite III as it was called. This is very similar to a seat I had on the Cathay 777 or the Qatar A380. They are in a 1-2-1 configuration so all seats have direct aisle access. Nice big screens and plenty of storage. As I said, very similar to the other business class products out there. But it was a short flight, so whilst the cabin crew were attentive, they only offered drinks and a snack. I wasn’t feeling like it so I decided to recline and doze my way along.
Towards the end of the flight, I had kicked my shoes off to relax, we were on final approach and the seatbelt sign had come on. I was leaning forwards to put my shoes back on before resetting my seat position, which the cabin crew person took exception to. She leant over me pushing the button to put my seat up whilst I was still crouched down tying my laces. She really didn’t seem to be bothered that this was quite inconvenient and I would have asked her to stop if I hadn’t just about finished. It was very odd, you’d never catch anyone on Qatar or BA moving your seat for you without at least asking first.
Anyway, we landed in good time in Japan and the second leg of my work trip to Asia had begun.
Bottom Line
I always enjoyed flying on JAL in the past and this trip was not a let-down. If I needed to do a long flight with them, I would have no worries about business class. One little thing that’s nice, at airports that are not their home airport, the have a little ritual of coming out to see you off. I’ve seen this before at Singapore and they did it here. All the check-in/gate crew as well as other ground staff all come out, line up and bow as your plane departs, a nice touch.
