zebrametalevel

(this is a straight copy-paste job from my blog post here: http://memorable.voyage/2016/03/28/r...ate-about-you/ - there's no need to click on that, as everything there is here too!)


I love big airplanes, and I was very excited when I took this photo

A while ago I flew on Vietnam Airlines 787 business class service HAN-LHR return. I was a bit sceptical going in –Vietnam is a country where I haven’t always enjoyed my time, VN has a 3 star rating on Skytrax, and I am harbouring a small amount of irrational prejudice against SkyTeam. But I came off that flight feeling it had been a thoroughly decent flight, and what’s more, excellent value for money. The seat was comfortable and I slept well, the food was plentiful and tasty, if simple, and the staff tried hard despite limited English. I’m not a princess, and – while I don’t expect you to believe this having finished this post – it actually takes quite a lot to annoy me.

In contrast, with Asiana’s A380 ICN-BKK business class I was excited from the start. The seats looked good from the research I’d done online, I’d been blown away by Korean service and generally loved my preceding few days in Seoul, and hey look, it’s a Skytrax 5 star airline, just like my beloved Qatar Airways. My airport experience hadn’t started fantastically, but once I was settled in the lounge I was in a happy place.

I stayed excited until about an hour in the flight, by which time my enthusiasm had been squeezed out of me, drop by drop. It didn’t get any better, and I left the flight pissed off, and not in the least bit surprised there was no immigration Fast Track card given out on deplaning.

No one thing went terribly wrong, but many, many things went a little bit wrong, with the consequence that I’ve rebooked (at considerable personal cost) an upcoming BKK-ICN-LAX trip with Asiana on the basis that I simply no longer trust them with that much of my time.

So where to start?

The Seat


Window seat, near the window


Window seat, near the aisle; that little area under the handset is the only seat storage on most seats

1. Storage Areas

There’s no storage space built in to the seat – both above and below the footrest are no stowage areas. This would have been pretty irritating (because there also only a single small weirdly-shaped area for personal items that didn’t quite fit my phone in), except that I was sat next to two huge lockers attached to the fuselage (which wouldn’t have been the case for any of the middle seats, or the window seats nearer the aisle, but whatever). Awesome!


Storage area

I unload all my many items in to the first one of these, and then my bag itself was able to go whole in to the second one. I was thinking happy thoughts at this time.

Then I decided I wanted to get something out of one of them. It … doesn’t really open again. Through the whole flight (and even with some investigation) I was unable to work out how you’re meant to open them again, but did find out that a short, hard thwack was the only thing that actually worked. Made a big noise, though, which made me pretty self-conscious about doing it once the lights were off…

This trick didn’t work on the second. Looking a bit more closely, it turned out to have an “INOP” sticker on it – known broken. And that’s fine. I understand equipment breaks. What I don’t understand is why it had been forced open, and left open for me to put my items in. I went to get a stewardess, who took one look at it and said “Yes, sorry, that one doesn’t work”. I explained my bag was in it, to great consternation, and she went to get backup.


“INOP”, apparently

The next piece I add purely as an illustrative point about the service on board. Two stewardesses came back. I was in the seat, so I got up to let them in. They stood smiling at the seat entrance blocking me in. “Excuse me”, says I, to indicate I’m trying to get out. They stand there staring at me. An impasse. I say “Let me get out please!”. Smiling, blank faces. I squeeze out, gently nudging them out of the way, to their massive surprise, and then they go and fix the locker. Quite what they’d been expecting, I really don’t know. Were all three of us going to be fitting in to the seat area? Polite but baffling service started on the ground and continued the whole journey…

2. The Seatbelt

WTH ... is this thing?


What's this?

Oh, it’s part of a wider seatbelt. That, OK, that makes sense. Cool! How does it connect? Huh, OK, the main piece connects by the hip, and then you attach the body restraint. Fine.


Seatbelt attaches at the hip

Only a seatbelt that closes by the hip (as I now know) means that it’s virtually impossible to adjust the seatbelt without opening and closing it again, and also means that rather than resting softly on top of you while you try and sleep, it competes for space with you in the already narrow seat.

This was mildly irritating at first, but became increasingly annoying through the six hours. Turns out I like to adjust my seatbelt a lot, but I’d never realized it before because with normal airline seatbelts, it’s really easy to do.

3. Seat width

(South) Koreans are big people (all figures sourced from some unreliable Internet site I found). The average Chinese male is 165cm. Thai men are 167.5cm. The average Japanese guy is 171cm. Koreans men are a whopping 175cm, which makes them the same size as the Israelis and Swiss. British guys like me are only an average 1.5cm taller than them. So there’s no “target market” excuse for having small seats, which I’ve occasionally read about in relation to JAL seats (although I found them perfectly adequate).

The seats are far too narrow to lie in comfortably, and that seems to be poor design / oversight rather than anything else. When you recline the chair, the armrest on the window side doesn’t fold all the way in – it sticks a couple of centimetres up still, which reduces the “bed” width by a few centimetres. Somebody actually designed it that way. They designed a retractable arm rest that doesn’t retract all the way. They could have made it a centimetre shorter, they could have found some more room somehow, and you’d have had a much more comfortable wider bed area. But they didn’t.


Hey, is it cool if I share this sleeping area with you?

What are they doing with the space? There’s no storage for most seats, the TV is pretty small, and the cubby hole for your feet, they’ve added some indent in to so it’s actually tiny (the guy behind me kept kicking his, hard, next to my head, through-out the night).

They’ve got a clever design for the table that means they don’t need to hide it anywhere, and yet they’ve somehow still ended up with a squashed uncomfortable seat. I seriously don’t understand how they’ve managed to make such a cramped and uncomfortable seat give the amount of room they have.

4. Ventilation

I’ve read before that Asian airlines like to make the cabin hot. That’s a shame, because a cold passenger can add a blanket, but a customer who’s too hot has less flexibility. But on a reasonable airline (with the notable exception of QR First class on their A380) you have a little air nozzle above you that you can use to fix this. Too hot? No problem, aim the air vent down at your body and ditch the blanket. It’ll dry you out, but at least you’ll keep cool.

No air nozzle above the seat on Asiana, so you broil. And to add to the “screw you, passenger” vibe, there is somehow a slight draft on your face when you recline, so you’ll still get dehydrated in the night.

If you had a bottle of water, that would help, but actually you have to ask for the water glass by glass throughout the night. More on that later.

Inflight Entertainment

5. Films and TV

15 English language films, and 2 TV series I hadn’t heard of. They’re a pretty reasonable selection of films too, not much filler, but there was only one I wanted to see and hadn’t already seen. Why such a small selection? It was about this point I realized I was going to be cancelling BKK-LAX return. Had they loaded up on Korean films instead, which would be understandable? No. 7 Korean-language films only. Getting bored on the plane was liable to be a particularly worry, especially given…

6. Wifi

… lol. Not a chance. This from a 5 star airline from the world’s most connected country.

7. Music

“Western Pop” music selection: Toni Braxton, Earth Wind and Fire, Paul Anka, more in that vein. There are going to be some very very disappointed kids who click on that. Quite a large selection of pop music from the 80s and early 90s. When you run out of that, there’s no shortage of “Blessing Music”, which appears to be classical music rearranged for babies and pregnant women.


Get me some of that "Blessing Music"

In fairness, there appeared to be a strong selection of K-Pop and other Korean music, so perhaps they just know their target market, and it’s not me.

8. Air show

I find the air show to be soothing, I like having it in front of me, normally quite dim (and airlines where the steward/stewardess comes and turns it off when you’re asleep, that’s a little annoying, but whatever, I understand). So how exactly do you screw up an air show? It’s a picture of a plane, some stats on flying, I mean, how hard can it be?

Turns out you can screw it up by turning in to a terrifying strobe show:


Terrifying strobe airshow; not sped up, this is actually what it looked like, only it didn't keep looping every 3 seconds

Also, thanks Asiana for suggesting that my phone might suddenly catch on fire if I accidentally drop it down the back of the seat:


Don't panic, it's only your phone bursting in to flames because you had it too close to the seat

9. The hand-held controller

This was initially a plus, as it’s big, it’s responsive, and it has an excellent screen. Bravo Asiana! But it turns out that responsive is not really what you want when it’s right next to your arm, and you accidentally keep changing the channel every 5 minutes.

I pretty much gave up on the IFE about an hour in to the flight.

Food and service

10. The food itself

Here’s the Western menu:


Western menu; I don't imagine every Chinese person is entirely comfortable having their dishes referred to as "Western" but whatever

And here’s the Korean menu which I had:


Korean menu. How to enjoy Ssambap? The answer is to eat it in a restaurant instead of on this flight.

The food was not good. The scallop to start was bad: tough, cold and chewy.


Steamed Scallop with Vegetables; sorry scallop friend, we both had higher aspirations for how this was going to turn out

The beef curry that you were meant to wrap with rice and sauce in green leaves was fun to eat, a bit like Thai miang kham, but not especially tasty. The sweet treats at the end were interesting, but not that nice – for all I know they tasted exactly how they were meant to taste though.


Korean-style sweet jelly of chestnut and dried apple roulade; a masterpiece of inflight plating

There was only one meal.

The Hδagen-Dazs ice-cream I begged off the cabin assistants was amazing, and served at just the right temperature, rather than the slab of rock-hard ice you tend to get on planes. However, my suspicion is that this was because the food was … served on a trolley.

11. Food service

What is this, 1998? I do not remember the last business class flight I took where the food was served from a trolley. Why hasn’t my plate been cleared 20 minutes after I finished eating? Oh, it’s because the staff are messing around with the trolley on the other aisle. Why can I hear the galley loudly from half way up the cabin half-way through a night flight? It’s because the staff are unloading the trolley (what were they doing for the intervening hours? More on this later). Why haven’t I been offered a drink with my meal? The staff are preoccupied with the freaking trolley.

12. Food presentation

Omnishambles. I don’t expect to be peeling plastic and foil off my food in business. The table cloth was very thin and elderly. My place wasn’t set for me. And on short-haul regional business class on a battered old narrow body, whatever. But on a 6 hour flight from a five-star carrier on their flagship plane, come on.


Ssambap, lovingly served with plastic and foil

Other annoyances

13. Miscellaneous

• I don’t care if there’s a famous football on team, I don’t expect a degradation in service because the crew are taking selfies with said team at the front of the plane, or running up the aisles in groups of three or four to do so;
• If you’re going to turn off the cabin lights, you’ve decided it’s a night flight, so the lack of amenity kit (or even the mini-kit with eye-mask and earplugs you get on some shorter routes) is irritating, especially if you’re going to make enough noise in the galley three hours in to the flight to wake the dead;
• I didn’t really lose my temper until about 45 minutes before landing, when they served landing drinks from the top and the bottom of the cabin … and missed out my seat. Even then, I only started to frown a little and said my pleases and thank-yous a little less sincerely (I'm British, after all). But by this point, the flight was totally lost to me;
• They didn’t give out Premium Lane Immigration at BKK. Quelle surprise.

Things that went well

• The hot towel they gave out (not a choice between hot and cold, sadly) was actually hot! The best I’ve come to hope for these days is luke-warm. Bravo!
• The six or seven times I rang my service bell to get water (as per above, no bottles of water, hot cabin, dry breeze in face), I had someone by my side in seconds. Magnifico!

Aftermath

I feel like I often read stories of people completely losing their rag over minor inconveniences, and saying they’ll never fly with an airline every again. A few months later, they’re asking questions about some upcoming flight on the same carrier.

I realized I would hate my life if I ended up doing my upcoming BKK-LAX route 4 legs on this plane and carrier, and ended up rebooking my flights on Etihad – at a personal cost of $600 (I didn’t feel I could rebill this to my client).

This meant I needed to ring Asiana. The fun was not yet over! First things first: after repeating the NATO-alphabet PNR a few times to the service agent, I decided to retreat in to using the reservation number, when I realized it was the last eight digits of my phone number. What? What? On the plus side, I guess this makes it easy to remember. But what do they do for the second one? While it’s easy to remember, doesn’t that mean anyone with my cellphone number can make changes to my flight? That was just weird.

As a sort of final screw-you, Asiana’s main service center isn’t able to cancel trips you booked off their website (at least for flights departing BKK) – instead you have to ring their local ticketing office (Thailand, in this case), which is – of course – not open on a Saturday.

Aftermath, Part 2

It is – of course – not possible to handle refunds over the phone. There’s a form to be filled out, they need to see my passport, and the whole thing appears to need to be physically mailed or taken to their office in person (update: no, it turns out I can email it to them, which is a relief). It’s like breaking up with an abusive partner who’s trying to suggest you can share your pet cat by slicing it in two and each taking a half.

Conclusion

I mean really, it’s sums up as: I have spent $600 extra and chosen considerably longer and less convenient flights on an older plane in order to avoid using Asiana and their A380 in the future, and I had many other things I’d have rather done with that money. What an irritating way to wrap up a trip to Seoul.

RTW1

Man.... why don't you stay at home and not travel at all.

When you're mind is set on finding little things that go wrong you are sure to find them... just like you have seem to have done. Your "trip report" sounds like one big whine fest about the minor things.

Lots of us have flown Asiana and it's perfectly acceptable, but it sounds you are better of flying BA (or one of the US airlines) where they truly understand what a Brit needs in service (or maybe not...)

zebrametalevel

Mmm, I think the problem was that I went in with very high expectations. In recent memory I've flown J with (at least) TK, RJ, TG, DL, QR, JL, CX, MH, PG (seriously, who knew?), RO, VS, UL, HG and VN, and the vast majority of those in the last six months, and this is the first flight I've left being noticeably pissed off.

It is indeed a whinefest about minor things - but a relatively large collection of them that came together and made me pretty unhappy.

quaxpilot

Just think one moment about the majority of people who will never fly something else than Y. Because they can't afford it or the company doesn't allow it. They would love to make once a flight like this which you had pissed off.

The more we get used to all these nice things which we enjoy, the more we take them for granted and the more our perspective moves into a wrong direction.

stargold

I feel exhausted just reading it. Your overall frustration was surely a result of trying to find fault in everything and letting them get to you, when many of the items are really things that should have maybe raised an eyebrow and then moved on.

Also, you do realise EY J (non-A380/B787) seat is substantially the same seat as OZ J, right? And that there isn't even the side storage bins?

PS. I think this really belongs in the OZ forum, not the TR forum.

RTW1

Sorry but it seems to me that you were looking for faults, and then surprise.... you found them. Happens to all of us once in a while that a small thing affects a flight or a hotel stay. And once it sets the mood you find fault with the smallest things.

But really when two of the faults you quote are with the IFE I know you are looking for a reason to dislike a flight. Asiana in C on the 380 is perfectly acceptable.... and yes, there sometimes is a minor language barrier with the flight attendants. Nothing to really be bothered about....

zebrametalevel

I would say all of them are. On every flight I take, and I fly a lot, even by this forum's standards, there's always something slightly annoying turns up. There's rarely quite so many, though.

So you've said. For me:

• The seat is not sufficiently comfortable for me to sleep in - the narrowness is a big issue
• The food wasn't nice and was badly served - this appears to be a problem with policy, rather than the flight attendants
• There's no wifi, which is going to make any flight from Bangkok to LAX a slog

And hence why I've but my money where my mouth is to switch my upcoming flight from Asiana to Etihad.

seat38a

Carfield

Thanks for a very detailed trip report! It basically reaffirms some of things that I have heard about Asiana. They have really cut back on many items. For a business class traveler, this flight seems to fall short.

I am surprised that the purser did not step in when those F/As went to the front of the cabin to take pictures with the football team. In Asian carriers, they were usually more discrete.

Thanks for sharing!
Carfield

CMK10

I think everyone is being too hard on the OP. We're Flyertalkers, when we fly premium cabins (especially on premium airlines), we are expecting a premium product, OZ obviously didn't deliver.

FWIW, I flew OZ earlier this month and I was frustrated by their lack of selection on the IFE as well.

benjahman

1. Had the same issue with the storage area. I had to bang a few times and eventually it would open, thankfully did not have much to stow.

2 & 3 Uh, what? it's a seatbelt mate, adjust as you'd like. I'm nearly 20cm taller and much wider and this does not stick out as an issue. I wouldn't want to fly 14 hours, JFK-ICN in this seat, but for a short-haul, no complaints here.

4. I can't confirm, but most A380s don't have personal vents, so tough to gripe against OZ for this. Many other wide body aircraft do not have these as well.

5,6 and 7. Totally agree. IFE is lacking, wifi would be great, and sparse music selection.

8. Has happened to us all, but that's a bummer and slightly seizure inducing.

9. Didn't have this problem.

10. I thought the food was fine and somewhat above par.

11. Trolleys are fairly common. CX rolls the trolley out. KE rolls out a salad trolley. LH as well.

12. I had the same meal and thought presentation was well executed and fairly smart of them.

13. Oy vey.

subichow

Hey.. I've had some pretty bad SQ experiences.. but doesn't mean ill stop flying them. There are hits and misses with everything. Maybe it was just a bad flight..

seat38a

OP, you probably would have had a stroke if you ended up in their non refurbished 777 to BKK like I was unfortunate to be on. It was all great from LAX but oh man was this plane "no bueno." Also, the entertainment system was on a loop with 4 channels each with the same stuff but in a different language.

P1010215 by B H, on Flickr

P1010214 by B H, on Flickr

My tray table was wobbly and when I swiveled it out so I could get out, it sagged 2 inches down without the support of the other armrest. Oh and the sliding down while trying to sleep was not fun as well.

With the whole trolley thing in J/C, I personally think its classy when done right with linen and great presentation. I loved what TK did with their trolley last year when I flew with them.

DSC02731 by B H, on Flickr

Now if you want to see dinged up and beaten trolley rolling through J/C I don't think anyone can beat the big 3 US.

glennaa11

I'm surprised a bit by the criticism of the OP. While some things are variable flight to flight, other things are inherent in the a/c or to the way the airline protocol runs.

It's a bit shocking that they don't give all pax a bottle of water. I guess maybe they consider this a regional flight so they don't offer it? I would probably have asked for a bottle at some point.

I'm not familiar enough with all of the options but were there no other choices beyond EY if the schedule and cost was an issue? Were you using miles or paying cash? From BKK to LAX it seems like there are lots of options including NH or SQ for example.

TOMFORD

I clicked on your link, since you're not a typical blogger pushing for credit card sign ups. Unfortunately the link did not work.

I do agree that the seat belt is stupid. Why can't they do a regular car seat belt if they must have a three-point seat belt? I also think the food is a bit lackluster, even in F.