Early alarm woke us up and we made our way to the airport using the same Airport Limo bus we took to get to the downtown Seoul. Short ride later, we are at Incheon's Terminal 1. For some reason, I was not able to check us in online, so we made our way to the check-in desks. My pet peeve with *Alliance flights is that having some status never fully translates to seat selection with the other airlines - I would love to choose exit row seats for free but in this case we coughed up the money


Forgive the zoom, picture of a not-so-busy check-in counter

Formalities later and a swift security and immigration check, featuring passport gates with a fingerprint scanner (!), we are tossed into the depths of Terminal 1. Eventually we find the lounge:


Entrance to the lounge

The lounge has a modern look with nice lightning and furniture

Quiet spaces with a lounge chair. They were all occupied at 7am with people sleeping in!

Not so great picture of the main lounge area

Some chairs.

Buffet choices were below average, in additional to the sausage stir-fry and scrambled eggs there was rice and gyozas.

Sad looking bread section, there was no Nutella / similar either

Salad bar

A popular lounge section, ramen bar!

Overall the lounge looks nice but the food is below average; online reviews seem to agree. However any food is better than no food and I can imagine having a comforting bowl of ramen before a long flight! Running out of time to take ramen pictures, we made our way towards the gate and boarded our bird.