bombayhog
Jul 24, 03, 9:37 pm
17/7/03 JL005 13:30 JFK-NRT (JA8913 – B747-400)
Before the Flight
Terminal 1 at JFK is such a nice place to be when you’re used to Terminals 8 and 9. On this day it was particularly nice, because I was about to try out the new Shell Flat Seat that JAL has introduced in executive class on certain routes. I booked this trip using 90K AA miles back in early April. I had no problem getting the dates and times I wanted, including an NRT-PVG (Shanghai) roundtrip in August for a few days, before returning to New York. My schedule on the way back means I’ll be taking the non-Shell Flat Seat flight to New York, which is unfortunate, but at least I’ll be able to compare the old with the new.
Check-in & Boarding
Check-in was effortless. I waited for about three minutes for a desk to open up, as the three that were open for executive class were all occupied. Afterwards, I hung out for about an hour with my cousin and my girlfriend, who were seeing me off. I’d been meaning to check out the Sakura lounge, but ended up going through security too close to boarding time. Security took about five minutes (there was a vaguely defined priority line) and the walk down to the gate took about sixty seconds. Getting there half an hour beforehand, I found that there were two long lines, branching out in separate directions. One was for First and Business, and the other was for Economy. I felt kind of guilty walking on to the plane while the other line watched us, at a standstill. Boarding started at about 13:10, which was ten minutes late. Nevertheless, it seemed to progress quite smoothly, and we left the gate just about on time.
The Aircraft
The exterior of the plane was a little dirty. I would have expected a bit more from JAL. But what can you do? These things go through quite a lot in a day. And, this being one of the few planes outfitted with the new seats, I suppose JAL doesn’t exactly have the time to be cleaning it regularly. Nevertheless, I was excited to be back on a 744, after close to two years of monogamy with the 777 on longer flights. Don’t get me wrong, the 777 is great. But every once in a while, I start to miss the 747- a staple of transoceanic travel for me while growing up.
I walked past the new First Class on my way into the plane. To tell you the truth, it’s got kind of an odd look to it. The seats are a creamy white color, and the floor is a pistachio green. I’m sure the seats are comfortable, but the cabin gave off a weird energy with that color combination.
The interior of the plane looked well kept and pleasant, for the most part. On this particular aircraft, the upper deck is economy class, and most of the main deck appears to be taken up by Executive Class. There are three distinct sections behind First Class (in the nose, of course) that comprise it. The third section extends far to the back of the plane, behind which is a relatively small Y cabin. It seemed as if they would never fill that many C seats, but the flight ended up being almost 100% full throughout.
I was in the second section, in seat 28K, which is a window seat on the right. In that seat, I was right behind the leading edge of the wing where it meets the body. A good place to be, with three windows to myself and an adequate view of the ground below.
The Flight
Take-off was a very quick process. A safety video featuring live-action slide demonstrations was played while we taxied, and there seemed to be very little traffic ahead of us. We abruptly turned onto the runway, powered up, and were on our way with the classic fully-loaded 747 roll. I’m not sure how long it took for us to rotate, but it felt like a very long time. Powering into the air, we did the customary sharp left turn which eventually took us around in a large circle over Long Island, until we were heading up over Connecticut and the Hudson Valley. Flight time was announced as 12 hours 55 minutes. Pretty good for westbound; as it turned out, we had very little in the way of headwinds for most of the flight. The climb to our eventual altitude of 38,000 feet was gradual, over the course of an hour or two.
The Seat
The new Shell Flat Seat is a beautiful thing to look at. The photos at www.jal.com (http://www.jal.com) are fairly indicative of how it looks. The dark grays, blacks, and silvers that make up the shell and the seat are a very welcome aesthetic leap forward, compared to some other carriers’ designs.
The point of the seat is that it’s meant to lay flat relative to your body, but at a slight upward angle, moving within a hard plastic shell so as not to affect the experience of those behind you. As such, the shell of the seat in front feels a little bit closer to you than a classic reclining seat at 60” of pitch. When flat, your legs end up in a little recess at the bottom of the shell in front of you, allowing for that level of recline. Nevertheless, it does not feel too tight. Getting over the legs of the person next to you if they are in the flat position is slightly tricky, but much easier than in any other business class I’ve sat in, due to the fact that when reclined, the seat is very low to the ground.
The controls on the seat are electric, with three pre-set positions- fully flat, fully upright, and slightly reclined- as well as every other control imaginable. The seat appears to be intelligent, in that if you try to make it do something that will cause the seat to hit the floor or the seat in front, it will adjust itself appropriately so as to avert disaster. Nevertheless, there were a few occasions on which it didn’t quite work, and the seat got “caught.” Also, while the lumbar controls seemed to work, there were five different lumbar button options, and I never quite got to understanding the roles of each button. They all seemed to do essentially the same thing, in slightly different ways. After a while, I got tired of pressing the buttons and left it.
When fully flat, the seat was nice to lie in. The angle I was at bothered me less than I expected it to. However, the pillow and blanket that were supplied were fairly mediocre. The pillow was barely bigger than a standard economy pillow, and the blanket was about the same as in the back. Before the flight, I had been expecting some sort of comforter/duvet-like offering. This was disappointing. In the end, I wasn’t ever tired of enough to sleep much, but the comfort-level when I did attempt to was not particularly impressive.
IFE
The video screen mounted in the shell in front is gorgeous, mostly because of its size. I believe they are around 10” or thereabouts. However, I found that when turned on, the quality of the video was fairly poor. I don’t know whether this is because of their method of compression of the digital files, or because the resolution on the screens is low, but I considered it to be close to unacceptable in such a newly designed system. The system was Magic-1. Apparently, JAL has three different Magic systems. I’m not sure which is the best one. The system was meant to be AVOD (Audio-Video on Demand) and while this was nice for watching the movies, I found that there were some problems with it.
My main complaint on this flight was with the entertainment system as a whole. First of all, the guide to what is available for your specific flight is confusing to say the least. At some point, I stopped trying to figure it out from the magazine. Luckily, the movies and their channels were listed on the main Video screen when turned on. Also, the navigation of the various components of the system is awkward. The audio selections were not on demand, as far as I could tell, and every single channel was absolutely terrible, so I left it alone. The moving map was hard to locate. Pressing a few buttons seemed to usually bring it up, but it was a fairly random process trying to find it. When on, I noticed that the graphics were truly substandard. The best way I can describe it is to compare it to an old Classic Nintendo game. The screen struggled to handle the blues and greens, and the fonts were large and pixellated. There was a selection of games, which were fine for what they were- Tetris, Memory, etc. They were good for a diversion once in a while.
The movies on offer were pretty uninteresting. I don’t remember the full selection, but I ended up trying and failing to sit through “Shanghai Knights” and remaining somewhat entertained by “The Recruit.” Being able to stop and start the movies was great, except that at some point, when I needed to rewind the film a little, pressing the button once caused it to jump back half an hour in the film. No matter how I pressed the buttons, I couldn’t get it to rewind or fast-forward in an orderly fashion. Having paused one of the films and then restarted it, the audio became completely out of sync with the video, which was aggravating. This problem solved itself after about ten minutes, but it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Overall, I was very disappointed that this was the level of IFE in JAL’s new business class.
Service & Food
This was decidedly the best aspect of the flight. The flight attendants were cheerful, willing to help, and extremely polite. They were all supposedly bilingual, but a couple had a hard time hearing me in English, so I used whatever Japanese I could to help them along.
There was sleepwear available on this flight, but I didn’t take advantage of it. At some point early in the flight, the FAs came through with various toiletry items, including a “refreshing eye moisture mask” which I had no idea how to use. No bag, however, to put all of the toiletries in, which was disappointing.
There were two full meals served on the flight, both of which included a Western or Japanese choice. I chose the Japanese meals for both. I will limit my comments to simply say that the food was very good, and that there was plenty of it. The food on a flight doesn’t particularly interest me, and I’m lazy, so I won’t transcribe the menu. If there is overwhelming demand for it, however, I’ll come back to this report and type it up. Just let me know if it matters to you. There were self-service snacks and drinks available at all times, as well as Udon, Soba, or Ramen that you could order from the FA at any point. I would have wanted them to come through the cabin a few more times during the flight to offer water or drinks. As it was, I was sometimes left thirsty and debating whether it was worthwhile to bother one of them about it. I was, however, very happy that they had cold green tea on the flight. I must have had about ten glasses of that.
I had two amusing encounters with the FAs while inflight. The first was when a younger FA approached me with an application for the JAL mileage club. As she showed it to me, I stopped her to explain that I was already a member of AA’s program, so there was no need as they were partners. She responded by pointing out the AA logo in the back of the pamphlet, explaining that “yes, AA is also a partner of JAL Mileage Bank.” I decided to leave it alone and take the application. She responded by giving me a pack of JAL playing cards, for which I was very grateful. The second encounter came when I saw in the guide that stationery and a free mailing service was available. I decided to kill some time writing a letter, and called over an attendant to ask for the stationery. She came back about five minutes later with a “JAL Kids” pack on a tray, a turquoise and yellow thing containing some pencils, a ruler, an eraser, and a couple of small pieces of JAL notepad paper. Embarrassed by appearing as if I’d asked for one of the kid’s packs, I opted to quickly take it and hide it as opposed to questioning her why she was bringing me this thing. And besides, she was so nice and eager to please that how could I possibly crush her by telling her she’d made a mistake?
Arrival
Our route took us up over northern Alaska and out over water just south of the Bering Strait. From there we continued downward several hundred miles off the coast of Russia. Approaching Tokyo, we had a fairly quick landing, doing a couple of quick turns as we made landfall east of the airport, and finally landing towards the south, if I remember correctly. The nice thing about this was that they turned on a camera mounted on the bottom of the plane. This was the first time I’d ever experienced such a thing, although I’d heard of it happening. Landing was smooth and we couldn’t have been more centered on the runway. A quick taxi past the usual Terminal 1 line-up and we parked at the gate, where the door was opened quickly. Immigration took forever. It appeared that a flight from China, as well as an ANA flight from London, had arrived just before us. It must have taken an hour and a half from the time I entered the queue. The most amusing encounter of the day came when the customs officer found that I could speak Japanese, and asked me directly if there was “anything else in my bag besides clothes and CDS, such as drugs perhaps?” I shook my head of course, and made my way out to find the Narita Express into Tokyo station, where I would catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) up to Sendai.
Overall Ratings (out of 10):
Seat: 8
IFE: 5
Service: 8.75
Food: 9
I was a little disappointed with my experience. Nonetheless, it was a comfortable flight, and the 13 hours went by quickly. JAL’s new seats weren’t as perfect as I’d been expecting, which is too bad. I’ll be interested to see what their old seats are like when I make my way back. Typical top-notch JAL service was definitely there though, and I would consider it miles well spent.
Please let me know what you think of this, my first report. If I’ve left anything out, I’d like to hear about how it could have been better. Thanks for reading.
/G.L.
Before the Flight
Terminal 1 at JFK is such a nice place to be when you’re used to Terminals 8 and 9. On this day it was particularly nice, because I was about to try out the new Shell Flat Seat that JAL has introduced in executive class on certain routes. I booked this trip using 90K AA miles back in early April. I had no problem getting the dates and times I wanted, including an NRT-PVG (Shanghai) roundtrip in August for a few days, before returning to New York. My schedule on the way back means I’ll be taking the non-Shell Flat Seat flight to New York, which is unfortunate, but at least I’ll be able to compare the old with the new.
Check-in & Boarding
Check-in was effortless. I waited for about three minutes for a desk to open up, as the three that were open for executive class were all occupied. Afterwards, I hung out for about an hour with my cousin and my girlfriend, who were seeing me off. I’d been meaning to check out the Sakura lounge, but ended up going through security too close to boarding time. Security took about five minutes (there was a vaguely defined priority line) and the walk down to the gate took about sixty seconds. Getting there half an hour beforehand, I found that there were two long lines, branching out in separate directions. One was for First and Business, and the other was for Economy. I felt kind of guilty walking on to the plane while the other line watched us, at a standstill. Boarding started at about 13:10, which was ten minutes late. Nevertheless, it seemed to progress quite smoothly, and we left the gate just about on time.
The Aircraft
The exterior of the plane was a little dirty. I would have expected a bit more from JAL. But what can you do? These things go through quite a lot in a day. And, this being one of the few planes outfitted with the new seats, I suppose JAL doesn’t exactly have the time to be cleaning it regularly. Nevertheless, I was excited to be back on a 744, after close to two years of monogamy with the 777 on longer flights. Don’t get me wrong, the 777 is great. But every once in a while, I start to miss the 747- a staple of transoceanic travel for me while growing up.
I walked past the new First Class on my way into the plane. To tell you the truth, it’s got kind of an odd look to it. The seats are a creamy white color, and the floor is a pistachio green. I’m sure the seats are comfortable, but the cabin gave off a weird energy with that color combination.
The interior of the plane looked well kept and pleasant, for the most part. On this particular aircraft, the upper deck is economy class, and most of the main deck appears to be taken up by Executive Class. There are three distinct sections behind First Class (in the nose, of course) that comprise it. The third section extends far to the back of the plane, behind which is a relatively small Y cabin. It seemed as if they would never fill that many C seats, but the flight ended up being almost 100% full throughout.
I was in the second section, in seat 28K, which is a window seat on the right. In that seat, I was right behind the leading edge of the wing where it meets the body. A good place to be, with three windows to myself and an adequate view of the ground below.
The Flight
Take-off was a very quick process. A safety video featuring live-action slide demonstrations was played while we taxied, and there seemed to be very little traffic ahead of us. We abruptly turned onto the runway, powered up, and were on our way with the classic fully-loaded 747 roll. I’m not sure how long it took for us to rotate, but it felt like a very long time. Powering into the air, we did the customary sharp left turn which eventually took us around in a large circle over Long Island, until we were heading up over Connecticut and the Hudson Valley. Flight time was announced as 12 hours 55 minutes. Pretty good for westbound; as it turned out, we had very little in the way of headwinds for most of the flight. The climb to our eventual altitude of 38,000 feet was gradual, over the course of an hour or two.
The Seat
The new Shell Flat Seat is a beautiful thing to look at. The photos at www.jal.com (http://www.jal.com) are fairly indicative of how it looks. The dark grays, blacks, and silvers that make up the shell and the seat are a very welcome aesthetic leap forward, compared to some other carriers’ designs.
The point of the seat is that it’s meant to lay flat relative to your body, but at a slight upward angle, moving within a hard plastic shell so as not to affect the experience of those behind you. As such, the shell of the seat in front feels a little bit closer to you than a classic reclining seat at 60” of pitch. When flat, your legs end up in a little recess at the bottom of the shell in front of you, allowing for that level of recline. Nevertheless, it does not feel too tight. Getting over the legs of the person next to you if they are in the flat position is slightly tricky, but much easier than in any other business class I’ve sat in, due to the fact that when reclined, the seat is very low to the ground.
The controls on the seat are electric, with three pre-set positions- fully flat, fully upright, and slightly reclined- as well as every other control imaginable. The seat appears to be intelligent, in that if you try to make it do something that will cause the seat to hit the floor or the seat in front, it will adjust itself appropriately so as to avert disaster. Nevertheless, there were a few occasions on which it didn’t quite work, and the seat got “caught.” Also, while the lumbar controls seemed to work, there were five different lumbar button options, and I never quite got to understanding the roles of each button. They all seemed to do essentially the same thing, in slightly different ways. After a while, I got tired of pressing the buttons and left it.
When fully flat, the seat was nice to lie in. The angle I was at bothered me less than I expected it to. However, the pillow and blanket that were supplied were fairly mediocre. The pillow was barely bigger than a standard economy pillow, and the blanket was about the same as in the back. Before the flight, I had been expecting some sort of comforter/duvet-like offering. This was disappointing. In the end, I wasn’t ever tired of enough to sleep much, but the comfort-level when I did attempt to was not particularly impressive.
IFE
The video screen mounted in the shell in front is gorgeous, mostly because of its size. I believe they are around 10” or thereabouts. However, I found that when turned on, the quality of the video was fairly poor. I don’t know whether this is because of their method of compression of the digital files, or because the resolution on the screens is low, but I considered it to be close to unacceptable in such a newly designed system. The system was Magic-1. Apparently, JAL has three different Magic systems. I’m not sure which is the best one. The system was meant to be AVOD (Audio-Video on Demand) and while this was nice for watching the movies, I found that there were some problems with it.
My main complaint on this flight was with the entertainment system as a whole. First of all, the guide to what is available for your specific flight is confusing to say the least. At some point, I stopped trying to figure it out from the magazine. Luckily, the movies and their channels were listed on the main Video screen when turned on. Also, the navigation of the various components of the system is awkward. The audio selections were not on demand, as far as I could tell, and every single channel was absolutely terrible, so I left it alone. The moving map was hard to locate. Pressing a few buttons seemed to usually bring it up, but it was a fairly random process trying to find it. When on, I noticed that the graphics were truly substandard. The best way I can describe it is to compare it to an old Classic Nintendo game. The screen struggled to handle the blues and greens, and the fonts were large and pixellated. There was a selection of games, which were fine for what they were- Tetris, Memory, etc. They were good for a diversion once in a while.
The movies on offer were pretty uninteresting. I don’t remember the full selection, but I ended up trying and failing to sit through “Shanghai Knights” and remaining somewhat entertained by “The Recruit.” Being able to stop and start the movies was great, except that at some point, when I needed to rewind the film a little, pressing the button once caused it to jump back half an hour in the film. No matter how I pressed the buttons, I couldn’t get it to rewind or fast-forward in an orderly fashion. Having paused one of the films and then restarted it, the audio became completely out of sync with the video, which was aggravating. This problem solved itself after about ten minutes, but it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Overall, I was very disappointed that this was the level of IFE in JAL’s new business class.
Service & Food
This was decidedly the best aspect of the flight. The flight attendants were cheerful, willing to help, and extremely polite. They were all supposedly bilingual, but a couple had a hard time hearing me in English, so I used whatever Japanese I could to help them along.
There was sleepwear available on this flight, but I didn’t take advantage of it. At some point early in the flight, the FAs came through with various toiletry items, including a “refreshing eye moisture mask” which I had no idea how to use. No bag, however, to put all of the toiletries in, which was disappointing.
There were two full meals served on the flight, both of which included a Western or Japanese choice. I chose the Japanese meals for both. I will limit my comments to simply say that the food was very good, and that there was plenty of it. The food on a flight doesn’t particularly interest me, and I’m lazy, so I won’t transcribe the menu. If there is overwhelming demand for it, however, I’ll come back to this report and type it up. Just let me know if it matters to you. There were self-service snacks and drinks available at all times, as well as Udon, Soba, or Ramen that you could order from the FA at any point. I would have wanted them to come through the cabin a few more times during the flight to offer water or drinks. As it was, I was sometimes left thirsty and debating whether it was worthwhile to bother one of them about it. I was, however, very happy that they had cold green tea on the flight. I must have had about ten glasses of that.
I had two amusing encounters with the FAs while inflight. The first was when a younger FA approached me with an application for the JAL mileage club. As she showed it to me, I stopped her to explain that I was already a member of AA’s program, so there was no need as they were partners. She responded by pointing out the AA logo in the back of the pamphlet, explaining that “yes, AA is also a partner of JAL Mileage Bank.” I decided to leave it alone and take the application. She responded by giving me a pack of JAL playing cards, for which I was very grateful. The second encounter came when I saw in the guide that stationery and a free mailing service was available. I decided to kill some time writing a letter, and called over an attendant to ask for the stationery. She came back about five minutes later with a “JAL Kids” pack on a tray, a turquoise and yellow thing containing some pencils, a ruler, an eraser, and a couple of small pieces of JAL notepad paper. Embarrassed by appearing as if I’d asked for one of the kid’s packs, I opted to quickly take it and hide it as opposed to questioning her why she was bringing me this thing. And besides, she was so nice and eager to please that how could I possibly crush her by telling her she’d made a mistake?
Arrival
Our route took us up over northern Alaska and out over water just south of the Bering Strait. From there we continued downward several hundred miles off the coast of Russia. Approaching Tokyo, we had a fairly quick landing, doing a couple of quick turns as we made landfall east of the airport, and finally landing towards the south, if I remember correctly. The nice thing about this was that they turned on a camera mounted on the bottom of the plane. This was the first time I’d ever experienced such a thing, although I’d heard of it happening. Landing was smooth and we couldn’t have been more centered on the runway. A quick taxi past the usual Terminal 1 line-up and we parked at the gate, where the door was opened quickly. Immigration took forever. It appeared that a flight from China, as well as an ANA flight from London, had arrived just before us. It must have taken an hour and a half from the time I entered the queue. The most amusing encounter of the day came when the customs officer found that I could speak Japanese, and asked me directly if there was “anything else in my bag besides clothes and CDS, such as drugs perhaps?” I shook my head of course, and made my way out to find the Narita Express into Tokyo station, where I would catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) up to Sendai.
Overall Ratings (out of 10):
Seat: 8
IFE: 5
Service: 8.75
Food: 9
I was a little disappointed with my experience. Nonetheless, it was a comfortable flight, and the 13 hours went by quickly. JAL’s new seats weren’t as perfect as I’d been expecting, which is too bad. I’ll be interested to see what their old seats are like when I make my way back. Typical top-notch JAL service was definitely there though, and I would consider it miles well spent.
Please let me know what you think of this, my first report. If I’ve left anything out, I’d like to hear about how it could have been better. Thanks for reading.
/G.L.