The beer machines are hardly unique to Narita.

Fortunately, KE has imported the same automatic beer machines in their ICN lounges, dispensing Korean beer (Max, IIRC, not like it matters much whether it’s that or Cass or Hite). They even had to buy 220V step down converters to run them because of the different power standards in Japan, from the looks of it.

While enroute to SIN yesterday, we received our updated itinerary. They've rerouted us on NH business class and surprisingly, the flight times are all within 20 minutes of what our flight times were on DL. I was hoping for SQ, but at least they aren't routing us through Korea! I do need to call, though, to see if I can change our seat assignments so that we are sitting together and make some changes to what they gave us on our Christmas flights.

I hope that DL lets some of them transfer to HND, but my guess is that there will probably be layoffs (fewer flights, no SkyClub, no maintenance hangar...)

When DL finally began flying from HND in the daytime in October 2016, DL employees from NRT transferred over to HND. I recognized several of them from the NRT days, plus their English ability was markedly different from the third party ground agent services that had managed their LAX/SEA midnight flights beforehand. I would imagine that a good amount of NRT employees will simply hop over to HND after the transition.

It's important to note that layoffs in Japan are generally not allowed unless there are extenuating circumstances related to the company's financial health, which is irrelevant in DL's case.

Employees who do not want to transfer to HND for commute reasons will probably be able to find work at DL's Tokyo office, or perhaps at another airline or third party servicer in the worst case scenario. Japan actually has far fewer workers than there are people who can work those jobs, and that extends to the airports. There are more non-Japanese than ever working at airport security, as gate staff, etc.

The DL NRT crew will be fine!

Or anywhere for that matter.

And as DL has shut down other locations entirely, for example FUK, the staff there have been simply laid off (I asked, and so was told - that the short notice period came as a shock to all of them).

We did think about doing that, but with the flight schedule (NH doesn't have a non stop) we would end up getting to Kyoto even later than with taking the train. It's ok, since we buy JR rail passes and will do some other side trips from Kyoto.

I thought I'd report back. We had three reservations that were impacted by this change in service between SIN and NRT. Our October tickets (SIN-NRT) have been rebooked on NH and surprisingly, the flight schedule is almost identical to what Delta's schedule was. My husband and I were on different reservations for flights from SIN to MSP in December (different departure dates) and then returning together. We weren't satisfied with the rerouting on the outbound sectors as they rebooked us SIN-ICN-ORD-MSP. The ICN-ORD sectors were on Korean Air. There is a huge difference between business on Korean and Delta One! My outbound sector was on a day when there is a good connection between the SIN-ICN flights and the nonstop to MSP, so I requested to be switched to that flight and they agreed. There is no MSP to ICN on the day that we were returning to SIN so Delta allowed us to switch our tickets to the day before and go on that route. (They had routed us MSP-DTW-ICN-SIN, with a 39 minute connect time in DTW. I've done that before and it is a tight connection and I ended up running to the gate and they had already boarded and all the overhead bin space was already taken in Delta One.) I have no desire to have a tight connection like that in January, where it is easy to have a 10-15 minute delay due to weather in MSP. ) My husband is flying on a day when Korean Air doesn't fly the flight that has a good connecting time, and it means he would have a 13 hour connection in ICN, so he was able to switch his SIN-ICN-ORD-MSP(on Korean Air) to one going through DTW. They had trouble with my ticket, though, because my ticket was purchased using "Pay with Miles", and apparently that is not allowed on Korean Air. I use "Pay with Miles" all the time so that is disappointing to realize that we won't have that benefit anymore traveling from Singapore.

I agree! Not only is the DL Delta One product better than KE's Prestige Class, but I was disappointed that we will no longer be able to use the "Pay with Miles" option on Delta bookings from SIN to the US.

What fare class do you need in order to upgrade using a GUC on KE? Are the rules about fare class the same on KE if you want to use miles?

Using GUCs on KE is similar to AF -- you need to be in fare classes Y, B or M to be upgraded to business class.