Incheon Seoul to Auckland on Korean Air B747-400 in business (ICN-AKL C)
The transfer security queue was shorter at this time than most other times I've been through. However there was a brief delay because it took a bit to find my name on the print out of my itinerary. Without that I would have had to go through immigration and check in landside.
At transfer desk I was given a boarding pass for the next flight. I noticed my FFP was not showing. On Korean Air not only do they print the FFP number and status, but also show current and lifetime mileage balances. So it was quite obvious to me it was missing. The agent was unable to manually input my FFP number. I do not understand how the FFP number was missing in the first place - it was in the booking and showed on my previous boarding passes (and indeed my KE status is the reason for the seat block on the previous flight). I also do not understand how a KE agent cannot add a KE FFP number on a flight operated (and marketed) by KE on a KE ticket.
So it seems I will have to lodge a missing mileage credit. This is a pain with KE as they require the boarding pass (not a copy of the boarding pass) to be mailed (not emailed).
By now it was just over an hour until departure, or just a short while until boarding. I headed to the lounge to try and get a shower. I wasn't confident I'd be given a shower room key due to the limited time available. I think the desk staff didn't notice my onward flight time when I was handed a buzzer. Once again I just had a quick drink before it went off. Refreshed after a quick shower I headed to the nearby gate where boarding was underway.
I had my usual middle aisle seat and as usual when flying Korean on the 747 had an empty seat alongside. This seat had a broken IFE so even though I'd boarded earlier than usual I was confident it would remain empty with the cabin only being half full. The downside is I couldn't use the adjacent seat to show flightpath while watching a movie in my seat.
There was a delay in pushing back and a further delay for de-icing. We reached the runway an hour after scheduled departure. Dinner was served fairly quickly and then I drifted off to sleep. I awoke a couple of hours out from Auckland when the lights were turned up for breakfast. We arrived 20 minutes late and unusually pulled into one of the A380 gates in pier B. With our late arrival all the other early morning arrivals had cleared immigration and mostly cleared customs so it was fairly quickly through.
A new baggage claim area has opened so there is an extra walk coming off the escalator down from immigration instead of turning right then left for baggage claim your turn hard left and do a loop around into the baggage claim area. All unneccessary because the old passage could still be used and direct those using the one belt to the right to go that way, instead of forcing everyone to go the long way around.
Customs also had a subtle change with one of the NZ/Australia lines now having a sign for nothing to declare. Amazingly I was the only person using that line with the other lines having about 20 or 30 people each.