Curse of Korean Air partnership
 

Man, all the Asian destinations besides DL's direct routes and into JP are connected via ICN now!!! Everything is at least 24 hrs or 30+ hrs of travel time... That's almost doubling of other airlines's connecting flights! They need to fix the schedules FAST! 5 or 8 hrs gap at ICN on almost every flight - ridiculous!

Interesting. I am not seening that. I have 5 connections in ICN coming up. None longer than 4 hours. Most less than 3 hours.

Would you care to site some specific origin and destination airports?

I'm noticing this for the SIN routes on certain days in July and on... is DL killing the NRT-SIN-NRT flights and routing through ICN instead?

This has appeared off and on in past. Mainly the issue is how full and thus what cost the NRT routing is. With the JV I expect the cost of DL fares using KE codeshare will come down. Thus you'll see more options showing there. I don't see DL giving up SIN. The plane is always full it seems with paid J passengers.

Side question. Curious can DL move NRT-SIN to HND-SIN? Know they can't do that with US routes, curious if it can be done with SIN.

KE appears to not operate the 6:40PM ICN-SIN KE641 flight on 4 Monday's in July and 1 each in June and August. Aside from those dates, this flight is well-timed to serve connections from US gateways (and the return KE642 aligns with return flights to US). At this point, DL has said nothing about the NRT-SIN flight.

I've noticed painfully long connections in ICN as well off and on over the last year. Once DL discontinued BKK I've followed the options to get there closely and often saw only 14+ hour connections to get back from BKK-TLH. In fact, almost any east coast airport returning from BKK required a 14+ hr in ICN. It actually slightly intrigued me about the possibility of taking a mini trip around the ICN area as I've never been before. But, I've since relocated to ANC (yes, complete opposite side of the country!) I recently booked a BKK trip for this November ANC-SEA-ICN-BKK and the reverse on the return. The connections are a nice 2 hrs each way in ICN. I have not searched to see what an east coast smaller airport would require. It seems like the trend is for the connections to be improving. Looking forward to transiting ICN for the first time in a few months, but I'm missing NRT at the same time.

I recently booked a trip from the US to PEK on the DL website, and on the way back I have a KE flight (with KE flight number, not DL code share) to ICN (booked in T class), and then onward a few hours later to the US on DL. All in Economy (upgraded to Comfort+ except the KE leg, of course). On the DL website I tried to pick an economy seat on the KE flight, but it does not stick. Judging from the KE site, T class on KE is sort of KE's equivalent to Basic Economy and does not allow for advanced seat assignments. Does anyone know whether there are exceptions for that for Skyteam Elite Plus passengers?

I don't know about any exceptions for SkyTeam Elite Plus, but I can share my experience last month with obtaining a KE seat assignment. It was a DL marketed flight operated by KE. Choosing a seat assignment on the DL website would not stick. I contacted DL to obtain the KE PNR. Once I got the PNR I tried to pull up the itinerary on the KE website with no luck. I contacted KE and was told they see the reservation in the system, but could not display it because it was issued on DL stock. They also said advance seat assignment is not allowed in economy when booked via DL. I called in to DL just to verify that what KE was telling me was correct. While navigating the phone prompts the automated system said it recognized I did not have a seat from ICN-BKK and the return BKK-ICN. It asked if I wanted it to assign seats. I said "Yes." Done. It assigned two economy seats next to each other 53A/B. These aren't the best seats but so far they have stuck. They also appear reserved when checking the flight seat map online and via a 3rd party site. It's frustrating to not be able to choose one's desired seats. Hopefully with the partnership this will change for the better. I'll update after I fly my trip to report whether the seats stuck or not. It's not until this Oct/Nov though so I'm sure others can report back before I can.

When I've checked, the KE schedule choices for SIN through ICN have been better than DL through NRT in terms of arriving and departing at reasonable times, with DL tending to arrive into SIN around 1 am and to depart around 6 am. In particular, KE has a late evening departure for an overnight flight to ICN which for me is much better than arriving at the airport by 4:30 am. To me, this is more important than an hour or two more for a connection, especially when I have lounge access.

I'm flying to BKK in 2 weeks. Flight there has a 4:15 connection time (I wanted the overnight LAX-ICN flight - all good). Flight back has a 1:45 connection .

I first noticed this last summer. There seem periods (don't know if an hour, day, or week) in which it's hard to get any connections other than ICN when flyng onward.
Though most recently, it was "normal" again.

In and out of TPE similar to BKK. Basically, all the routes DL cancelled are now passing through ICN or NRT. Connecting time is as said, up to 8 hours. TPE-ICN (on CI), ICN-SEA (on DL) = that's an 8+ hr connecting. TPE-ICN (on KE), ICN-LAX (on KE) have 2 nearly 5 hr of connecting. TPE-NRT (on CI), NRT - SEA (on DL) has a very long connecting. Sadly, TPE-NRT (on CI), then HND-LAX (on DL) has only about 4 hours, which is a rush to get from NRT to HND, factor in luggage and custom time.

Man, I miss the NRT hub days, everything or orchestrated with an ~2 hr connecting - no need to rush but also not a lot of wasted time.