A little background: At the end of 2008, we found out my cousin was to get married in February 2009 in Taipei, Taiwan. I immediately knew that I wanted to go. My father refused to fly that far and my brother could not get off from work. After much debate, my mother decided that she would go as well (it was her sister’s son). So - the next step was to figure out how to get there. My aunt and her family, who live in LA, were flying Asiana through Seoul to get to Taipei. I knew I wanted to fly a Star alliance airline in order to get credit for my miles so this routing worked out quite well for me. I later found out how highly rated Asiana is and that it is not widely reported in the forums, so I was very excited to get the chance to fly with them. We then had to figure out how to get to LA. At first, my mother and I looked at United, but their timing did not really allow us enough time to ensure that we’d make the Asiana flight, so we decided to go with US Air. Our finally itinerary was as follows:
2/4/09 PHL-LAX US Airways 4:00 PM-7:05 PM
2/5/09 LAX-ICN Asiana Airlines 12:30 AM-7:00 AM +1
2/6/09 ICN-TPE Asiana Airlines 10:30 AM-12:10 PM
2/8/09 TPE-ICN Asiana Airlines 1:35 PM-4:55 PM
2/8/09 ICN-LAX Asiana Airlines 8:00 PM-1:40 PM
2/8/09 LAX-PHL US Airways 10:20 PM-6:11 AM +1
US Airways is well covered in the trip report section, and for the LAX-ICN leg I basically slept for the entire flight, plus the flight is entirely in the dark, so there are few pictures from that flight. This report will mainly focus on the return flights of TPE-ICN-LAX in Asiana Airlines business class. At the end of the report I will include a few pictures of the 777 C class cabin for anyone looking for pictures of the 777 cabin.
The report includes many many firsts for me.
- First international flight leaving from somewhere besides PHL
- First 777 flight
- First 747 flight
- First time to Asia
- First time on an Asian carrier
Now to the fun part…
My 2 aunts, uncle, mother, cousin and his fiancée were booked at The Grand Hotel in Taipei. We had reserved the airport bus, conveniently called “AirBus”, to TPE at 9:20 AM. The bus is only 90 New Taiwan Dollars so only about 3 USD, for the hour journey –a very good deal. We didn’t leave till about 9:30 AM and got to the airport in just shy of 1 hour. Now some obligatory shots of Taipei.
Poster at the airport
There was no line for the business class check in, so we walked right up and received boarding passes for both flights, lounge invitations for TPE and ICN, and bags tagged with priority tags, quickly and efficiently.
Business Class check in at TPE
Travel Class check in at TPE
FIDS
Main Board, under is where you enter to clear immigration and security
We went to the second level to get some coffee at Starbucks and chat at Burger King before clearing immigration and security. Over view of check in area and main lobby of terminal 2 at TPE
About 1.5 hours before our flight was due to leave, we proceeded to clear security in order to do some last minute shopping and check out the lounge. (I was the only one who cared about the lounge.) For some reason, Asiana is using the EVA Air lounge at TPE. Singapore has a Silverkris lounge at TPE, so it would seem to make sense to use a Star partner’s lounge, one would think.
The lounge is a decent size and was very quiet around noon on a Sunday. I guess most of the international planes leave later in the day.
When you first turn right after checking in with the agents, you are greeted with a nice overview of the seating
There is a business center with computer immediately to your left
I like the fridge in the business center, so you don’t have to walk to the snack area
I went over to the snack area to see the offerings, being used to RCC’s and US Air clubs. It’s weird seeing the variety of food/drinks being offered in other parts of the world. If other carriers can do it, why can’t carriers in the US? (Rhetorical question of course; I know why – they’re stingy.)
(I was in a rush to take pictures so I didn’t think about opening the lids. So it may be a mystery to my readers, but there is hot food available!)
Hot Dogs! This made me feel at home
A Variety of steamed buns
Boarding passes and Lounge invitations
I wanted to try to make it over to the Silverkris lounge, but after spending so much time browsing the duty-free shops and checking e-mail at the EVA lounge, I didn’t think I had enough time. I made my way to gate C8 to meet up with the rest of my family. Right next to C8 was a “Gamezone” which is just an area set up with multiple video game systems and large plasma TV’s. It looked like a good way to kill some time, but the gate offered too-good views of the runway/tarmac so I decides to take some pictures of the action.
My Plane today being prepared to take us to ICN
An Eva A330 before pushback to Hong Kong
The gates are TPE are 2 levels, so about 30 minutes before departure, we made our way downstairs to where the real gate area is. It also offered a better view of our plane
