I thought I'd add my not so positive, views on one of MIAT's few flight pairing having just taken a return, HKG-ULN-HKG for a week in Mongolia. I paid cash (way in advance, spending HKD 10k per person / USD 1300) and chose MIAT (OM) over Korean air for a direct flight and better timing (leaving HKG at midday and returning at 6am). In both directions I had a B737-800 but two different old aircraft, by which I mean the seats were American domestic first class style, large seats and not much else. Booked business as I thought I’d try it out, and it is a 4.5 hour flight (as scheduled, in fact in both cases we arrived with less than 4 hours of flying).

Check-in:Smooth in both directions, separate business class counter with little queue and quickly processed by polite staff (I’d reserved my preferred seats via email months in advance). Note – don’t arrive too early at ULN, coming two hours before the flight (4:30am!) we had to wait for another 15 minutes till airport security opened.


Waiting for security to open ULN

Lounge: In HKG MIAT uses the generic Plaza Premium lounge which is well covered elsewhere. In ULN their ‘flagship’ lounge consisted of comfy seats, a good view of the aircraft and plenty of staff. They were offering to cook a variety of (Mongolian standard) foods, or offering sandwiches. I didn’t feel like eating but I thought it was ok for a small airport with 4 gates. Wifi worked!


The MIAT lounge in ULN


View from the ULN MIAT lounge of the runway and gates

Boarding: A mess. No priority queuing, there was a business class lane but in HKG it was unmanned and in ULN it was used by either class. In Hong Kong MIAT used a bus gate (how cheap!) which meant a lot of time spent on the bus waiting for other passengers to fill it.

At least boarding via bus gives you a nice view of the plane with fresh paint

Seats: Fine and comfy enough for the distance, but nowhere near as good as Cathay or others departing HKG, limited recline and nowhere near lie-flat. The seats were a little worn. No goodie kit provided, but there were personal slippers, a blanket and pillow.


Outbound seating, not that much legroom, but did have a legrest


Return seating, same style, different colour

Entertainment: Terrible, there was no personal entertainment, just shared TV screens that showed the same movie in both directions (Jumanji). Business class had some reasonable headphones provided, but realistically you need your own entertainment. Note I consider this unacceptable for the length of flight on a ‘full service’ carrier and it was my own mistake for not realising this in advance.


This is not the IFE you expect in 2018!

Food: HKG-ULN was catered by Cathay services and was a reasonable, if very limited, selection of ‘Beef or Fish’. This tasted nice enough, but was nothing special and not all that well set-up but the starter was good. The return from ULN was a breakfast, now changed to be a 'proper' breakfast vs the OP's flight (sausage, bacon, tomato, mushroom, ketchup, and then mashed potato…)or traditional dumplings, along with a cheese plate (which I actually liked) and a desert that I skipped. As there were two of us we managed to try each dish on offer


The tablecloths were very nice (unlike the sparkling wine)


Outbound (HKG-ULN) food choice 1: Beef


Outbound (HKG-ULN) food choice 2: Fish (Salmon)


Return (ULN-HKG) food choice 1: European


Return (ULN-HKG) food choice 2: Mongolian (dumplings)


Drink: Stick with beer. They had some German wines, including a sparking wine, that was pretty dire. Beer was marginally better. At least they served sparkling wine upon boarding and had no issues with providing alcohol with the breakfast service…


Mongolian beer is actually fairly nice (i.e. strong at 4.5-5% and distinct taste), the glass was MIAT branded

Crew: Attentive and responded to the call button outside of meal times. You seem to be served by two crew members, one who always stayed in the kitchen area and the other who served you.

Overall: I was pretty disappointed and in the future I would take the (substantially better I presume) Korean Air flights, though the arrival and departure times weren't pleasant and it required a transit. MIAT underwhelmed significantly and I would not recommend their business class product. If I just wanted the cheapest economy option it would probably be a better experience.

As a note, there were seat shifters on the outbound flight who had no shame upon being asked to move to the back after being discovered before take-off. Amusingly they had even moved a real passenger out of their seat (so they could sit together).