Asiana Club - OG vs. LH C class for KIX-LHR?

Planning to use UA miles for a Star award Osaka-LHR/CDG-Osaka in spring 2013. Have enough miles so hoping for F class on LH KIX-FRA outbound, but if unavailable and need to settle for C class, it looks like OG is an option for C class KIX-INC-LHR. Can anyone compare? Read a lot on the new OG seats, but will they be 100% on that route by that time?

By OG, I presume you mean OZ :)

OZ's Quadra Smartium seats (the new C seats) are very similar, although not quite identical, to the NH Staggered seat. The hard product is excellent.

The soft product, including service and food, is generally considered excellent as well. I have a feeling western food may not be up to NH standards, but Korean food is reliably excellent. Service - very courteous, eager to serve and friendly.

Really, the only real weakness in the new C product is that IFE is not up with the best such as SQ - otherwise, ICN is an excellent airport, and both the hard and soft product are also excellent.

The situation changes quite a lot when talking about the old C seats for night flights where you want to sleep, especially given that NH new C seats are serving all European destinations except MUC whereas only a handful of LHR flights are getting the OZ new C seats so far. For a day flight the old C seat is okay, but not so good for the night flights where the fully flat seat is most appreciated.

At the moment, only the LHR flights on Mondays and Sundays are getting the QS seats. Otherwise, you will have to wait and see how the timetable changes - too early to tell for next spring yet.

Yes, sorry about the OG, in the title no less:confused:. I've only recently become aware of Asiana. I take it then that they have no fixed schedule for introducing the new C seats on all flights. Not that any airline every adheres to their announced schedule, but maybe that would at least improve the chances.

I did mean to compare Asiana with LH, not NH. We want to return on ANA CDG-NRT-ITM, but outbound on NH would mean an 8 AM departure from ITM or an overnight at NRT. KIX is more convenient for us than ITM, and we're terribly late risers, so 9:30-10 is much better than 8.

Osaka to LHR is a day flight, and the only thing we use the entertainment system for is the map function, except once in the last row of C with crying babies immediately behind in the first row of Y I resorted to music on the headphones.

It rather sounds like the old OZ hard product is no better than LH, but if we get lucky the new OZ seats might be available. OZ soft product might be better than LH, especially since in my limited experience, C service on 2-class flights is more attentive than on 3-class flights.

Just a few points:

1. If the choice is between flying LH on KIX-FRA-LHR and OZ on KIX-ICN-LHR, then the choice is something of a no-brainer. ICN is infinitely superior to FRA, all the aspects of the KIX-ICN (seat, food, etc) is miles ahead of FRA-LHR, and OZ old C is still much preferable to LH C simply because of the soft product. As you noted, there's not a huge amount of difference in the hard product.

2. If you were able to get NH NRT-LHR, I would say it's worth getting up a little earlier in order to catch the ITM-NRT as the hard product is guaranteed to be the new seat. I mean, it's just one morning - how hard could it be to get up a little earlier? :p

3. Purely from my personal thoughts, I would say that by Spring 2013 (can you even book that early?) there's a decent chance that LHR will be served daily with the new seats since LHR is one of the most "premium" routes that is served with a 2-class 777. Given that the old OZ C product is not exactly a hardship (particularly for a day flight), you should have an enjoyable flight regardless of old/new seat.

I can't imagine any circumstances where you would want to take LH C over OZ C, apart from flight timings. The 'old' OZ C seat is still perfectly acceptable, and the OZ service is way ahead of anything that LH can offer.

Just a few points:

1. If the choice is between flying LH on KIX-FRA-LHR and OZ on KIX-ICN-LHR, then the choice is something of a no-brainer. ICN is infinitely superior to FRA, all the aspects of the KIX-ICN (seat, food, etc) is miles ahead of FRA-LHR, and OZ old C is still much preferable to LH C simply because of the soft product. As you noted, there's not a huge amount of difference in the hard product.


Agree re OZ vs LH quality.
The clincher to me is that FRA at 2 am in your head is a bad idea. Sitting around there waiting for a delayed onward flight after a 12 hour inbound flight does not please me personally; the ICN-LHR route can be delayed but not by much, and at the time of boarding in ICN my head is in a much better state than it would be by the time I got to FRA