stargold

Introduction
This set of flights is the return journey from my previous report, "Singapore Airlines 747 service to LHR – The end of an era". To continue the theme of saying farewell to 747s, I chose the NH flight NRT-FRA also operated by 747, since NH will also be phasing out their 747s soon.

Although I had tried ANA F in the 747 before, it was in their old cabin way back in 2001 (report here) and my other experience on NH F was last year on their 77W (report here). I had always wanted to try the "new" F cabin on the 747 as NH F is simply a wonderful product and the nose section of a 747 - well, it doesn't get any better than that! So when a space became available out of the blue, I decided to seize the opportunity and booked it. And made an early start of getting very excited for the flight!

There were a few noteworthy incidents on this journey back, including a pleasant surprise on the ICN-NRT flight, my first ever medical diversion and also the longest delay I have ever suffered in >15 years of flying. Read on!

My original schedule:

Flight 1: OZ102 16APR ICN NRT 1000 1210
Flight 2: NH209 17APR NRT FRA 1130 1635
Flight 3: LH4810 17APR FRA LCY 1810 1840

Index:
1. "A very pleasant surprise!" - OZ ICN-NRT
2. "A morning of sheer anticipation" - NRT and Lounge report
3. "Like a child on Christmas morning..." - NH NRT-FRA
4. The short hop back to London - LH FRA-LHR
==================================================
Flight 1: OZ102 ICN-NRT 16APR (TH), B747-400, Seat 2K
STD: 1000 (On Time) STA: 1210 (On Time)

Pre-flight

I was originally scheduled to fly on UA F for this first segment. Naturally I would have preferred OZ F over UA F (superior service and food/beverage offerings), but OZ had been unavailable in F and never became available up to departure. As the flight was only 2 hours, I thought UA F would be fine – but in a last minute change of mind, I decided to give OZ C a try instead as it had been a while since I last flew 747 Upper Deck. Three days before departure, after changing my ticket, I tried to assign my seat online but it gave me an error message saying that it could not allocate me a seat at this time – I then resigned myself to just turning up to the airport early.

Two days before departure, I was sending off a friend who was also flying to Tokyo and after she checked in at the City Air Terminal, I asked about my flight as well – I wanted to reserve a seat in the Upper Deck emergency exit if I could. The agent said “Well, I’m not officially supposed to help you reserve a seat two days before departure, but I’ll do it for you just this time” and booked me 10K. I was very much looking forward to the pleasant atmosphere of the 747 Upper Deck which is also quite different from the nose section.

In the vague hope that the seat assignment system was working again, I logged into the OZ online check-in system on the night before departure. This time, the seating chart managed to come up, and I was very surprised to find that I was actually booked on seat 2K instead. And the aircraft had the new OZ F configuration! I started thinking – had I been op-upped? Did they confuse my booking class and was I going to be ruthlessly put back into my rightful place in Business Class? Did they just push everyone in C up to F? Either way, I just really hoped that I will end up flying in 2K because it was OZ’s new F configuration and I had not been able to fly it yet because they do not fly to Europe.

[Travel tip: If you are flying KE or OZ and making your way to the airport from the Kangnam area (South of the river, near the COEX) you can check-in for your flight, give them your luggage and also do the immigration check there. When you reach Incheon, you can use the crew lane for the x-ray and a dedicated lane for passport control which potentially saves a lot of queuing and waiting]


A very pleasant surprise!

As usual, I got very little sleep on the previous evening – barely 3 hours’ sleep, I think. On the morning of departure, after a very hefty breakfast at home, my parents dropped me off at the City Air Terminal and I brought my small mountain of bags to the check-in desk. I knew that the official cut-off for checking in was 3 hours departure, but I was only 10 minutes late so I hoped it wouldn’t be a problem. Alas, it was indeed a problem – in order to check in any baggage (which I was very eager to do, to get rid of them as soon as possible) the 3 hour deadline is very strict and they could only give me my boarding pass, not take my luggage. A bit frustrated at the inflexibility, I turned down their offer of still giving me my boarding pass and instead proceeded to the airport buses upstairs.

The traffic initially looked pretty bad (not enough to make me worry about missing my flight, but enough to eat into my time at the airport) and I dealt with my anxiety by catching up with sleep for the next hour or so. I woke up as we were approaching the drop-off kerb and gathered my numerous bags again on the trolley after getting off the bus, then looked for the Asiana check-in desks. Not having travelled on OZ for a good while, I didn’t realise that they had moved their check-in desks from island C-D to island L (two opposite ends of the terminal, really) so I ended up walking all the way from island K where I entered the terminal towards island C, and then all the way back to island L – the roundtrip walk must have taken at least 15 minutes. Note to self – check before trekking all the way across the terminal!



Once I reached the Asiana check-in desks, I walked up to the Business Class check-in. There was a queue-warden who wanted to see my ticket. When I fumbled around looking for my itinerary printout, she asked me “You are travelling business class, aren’t you?” and nodded to me to proceed when I replied yes. It was 0840 by the time I reached the check-in desk, only 1h20m before departure. The very competent and smiley agent who checked me in told me with a rather concerned expression – “There were very few people in Business Class today so we have put you in the First Class seats for this flight – I know you reserved seat 10A on the Upper Deck so I’m sorry for the inconvenience”. Inconvenience?? Was she kidding? Because I could definitely live with this sort of “inconvenience” every time I fly! She also checked my luggage through to my final destination, London City Airport, which would save me from touch my bags until I get off the flight in London.

With my mouth in a big grin, my boarding pass with seat 2K printed and my bags now finally handed over, I peered into the security checkpoint 4, nearest to the OZ counters. It was absolutely packed – the result of several OZ flights all departing around the same time. It looked to be at least 30 minutes of fun waiting in the queue for the x-ray firstly, and then passport controls. So I decided to use my initiative and walked 80m or so to checkpoint 3. It was practically empty. Perhaps they should have some system of distributing the crowd evenly across the entrances, because I literally saved 25 minutes of extra queuing/waiting by walking 80m to checkpoint 3.

Once past security, I decided to skip the lounge (there was now only 20 minutes or so till boarding) and look for some souvenirs in the duty free for a few friends. I know, I know - a total rip-off compared to buying it in Seoul, but that is the price you pay for being disorganised! After buying a few bits and bobs, I proceeded to the gate and took a few photos of the B747-400 in the new Asiana livery that would take me to Tokyo today.








Registration of today's aircraft: HL7428 (thankfully not the ancient Combi!)


At 09:40, I boarded the aircraft and was warmly welcomed, then guided to my seat 2K. The first impressions for the F cabin was great – the colour scheme looked warm and easy on the eye, the cabin had a very spacious feeling and the flight attendants all seemed to be in a chirpy mood. One of the things that I didn’t really enjoy on my previous OZ F flight is that flight attendants were way too formal which made it difficult for me to relax, but on this flight they all had the right mix of charm and friendliness. After settling into my seat, I was offered a pair of headphones (still the rather poor Sennheiser PX200 which doesn’t offer noise-cancelling) and also a pre-departure drink. I opted for the orange juice and walked around for a while taking photos of the cabin. When I sat down after taking the photos, one of the flight attendants asked me rather nervously (but not at all in a challenging way) – “We usually get people asking us to take photos of them in the seat, but we rarely see anyone photos of the empty seats – may I ask what you’re taking the photos for?” to which I replied “I write a trip report after each flight and these photos go into the report – you can see it when I upload it, if you like!” She seemed happy with the answer and offered me a top-up of the orange juice on her way back to the galley which I took.

stargold

Seat 2A, mine for this short flight


It goes without saying - plenty of legroom!


The other side of the cabin


Nice and spacious front wall with the closet and bassinet hooks


The very cute KE 73W - really looks tiny next to the 777s!


KE still has plenty of 747s - I don't think they'll be retiring their 747s for a good while yet.


At 09:55 the doors closed, and we taxied across the terminal and onto the runway. Take-off was at 10:17 and possibly one of the briefest take-off rolls I have ever experienced on a 747 – it lasted barely 25 seconds. I guessed that the load must be very light for the aircraft to take off so quickly.

Here is the take-off video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m68U4bvnd8

Seatbelt sign was switched off at around 10:30 and menus were handed out by the In-flight Service Manager soon afterwards, who also introduced himself to each passenger in the cabin – a nice touch normally reserved for First Class only. As I expected, it was a full meal catering on this flight and better than anything that UA was planning to serve on the same leg in F. After ordering the Western meal (the abalone porridge didn't seem like enough food!) alongside some more orange juice, I took a few more photos of the cabin.


The overview of the F cabin from the front. Extremely light load in C today- only 4 pax including me!


The row of 4 window seats

Menu for this flight:

Western

Appetizer:
Smoked Salmon and Mixed Vegetables

Rib Eye Bul-Go-Gi
Served with Bulgogi sauce
Accompanied by Sugar Snap Peas, Mushroom and Steamed Rice

Dessert:
Bavarian Cream Cake

Korean

Abalone Porridge
Accompanied by Assorted Side Dishes and Watery Plain Kimchi

Dessert:
Seasonal Fresh Fruit

Coffee & Tea

-----------------------------------
Champagne: Champagne Cattier Brut
White Wine: HESS Monterey Chardonnay 2007
Red Wine: Artesa Elements 2004

The table (which took some effort to come out) was very nice and sturdy, but I don't think it had a swivel function - not very clever when you want to leave your seat while the table is open! After the table was set, the tray with the food arrived and I was momentary confused as it had a side of steamed rice on it. (I hadn't read the menu fully) When I queried this to one of the FAs, she replied that since it's a Japan route, they decided to have a more Asian type of Western Meal In any case, I started to eat the 2nd meal of the morning

The salad with the smoked salmon was very predictable, but nevertheless enjoyable thanks to the very fresh salad leaves and a decent quality smoked salmon. For the main dish, the beef was very tender and since it was more or less Bulgogi, it went very well with the rice as well. In effect, this was also a Korean meal! The dessert was also nice - the mousse was very light and not too sweet, which is just the way I like it.


Table with table cloth laid out


The "Western" meal which actually turned out to be another Korean meal!


I finished eating fairly quickly and tried out the AVOD system. This was the latest-gen AVOD (Panasonic eX2) with a brand-new map software which looked very good indeed (but different from SQ which also uses the Panasonic system)


Already half-way towards Tokyo!

stargold

It was time to walk around the aircraft and see the other cabins - I was curious to see how the Upper Deck looked with the new C seats. However, it wasn't quite as simple as just walking up to the Upper Deck - when I arrived at the top of the stairs, I found an empty Upper Deck and also an FA who stopped me from going further, saying "I'm sorry but you are not allowed to come up here". I told her I just wanted to take a few photos but she seemed adament that I should not proceed. At the perfect moment, however, the ISM peeked up the stairs to see what was going on, and saw me having this discussion - he told the FA to let me go and take my photos. I guess it was useful to have spoken to him earlier which meant he knew I was previously busy snapping away.


The empty Upper Deck - I don't think I've ever seen a completely empty Upper Deck in-flight before!


As is usually the case, the Exit window seat is the best C seat in the house...


I thanked the Upper Deck FA and walked back downstairs, then found the ISM again. I thanked him for letting me take photos upstairs, and he said that the FA was probably just nervous due to the location of the cockpit, for security reasons. He also added that he heard about me writing a trip report and asked me to write a good one about OZ - well, given how well the flight was going so far, it wasn't going to be difficult! After that, I walked to the very back of Y and came back to the front - with the conclusion that Y was still Y after all but if you're going to suffer in Y, OZ was probably one of the best ways to minimise the pain.


The huge wings...


Front of the Y section


After the stroll around the aircraft, I came back to my seat and decided to check out whether there was any short programs on the AVOD that was worth watching. However, the IFE had crashed in the meantime and AVOD was unavailable - instead, I was stuck watching some sort of hideous "You've been framed" sort of program. So the next best thing to do was test out the seat some more...


Seat in deep recline with my feet in the cubby hole (with the aforementioned hideous program playing on the IFE)

It was now 11:05 and there was barely an hour left of the flight. I realised that one of the FAs had taken the menu away which they always seemed to do, so I decided to make the task of going to the galley and asking for a menu more interesting by bringing along my SQ F menu from the LHR-SIN flight. I thought it could be interesting for them to look at what other airlines serve, since they probably don't fly other airlines very often.

They were very, very charming when I went to speak to them - they even joked around with me which I did not expect. I explained that I wanted one of the menus since I collect them, and just in case they are interested, here is a copy of a menu from one of my recent flights. They started reading the SQ F menu and said things like "Oh, so this is what the famous SQ serves!" "It's like reading a book!" and seemed very interested to have a look together.

The Assistant Purser then asked me, "Which do you think is better? SQ or OZ?" It was clearly a trap and the mischievous look on her face told me that she was only expecting one answer - it certainly wasn't SQ! One of the other FAs laughed and said, "If you put him on the spot like that, do you really think he can say SQ? Hahaha!" and I played along by replying that OZ was my favourite airline. (To be fair, it's certainly up there at the top, especially in Y). The Assistant Purser approved of my reply We then talked about the 747 amongst other things, and I told them about my previous "farewell SQ 747" flight and my next flight being my "farewell ANA 747" flight. All of them were full of personality and very fun to talk to - a completely different experience from some of my other OZ flights.

For the sake of completeness, (naturally, there was no time to actually sleep properly) I felt I should take some photos of the seat in bed mode. When I reclined the seat to the full flat position to take a photo, it became apparent that there was something of a design flaw / deficiency with the OZ F seats which I was not expecting. Unlike all the other airlines, the seat did not actually go 180 degrees flat - it maintained some elevation on the backrest and the knee area, which meant it was not flat in reality - more like 170 degrees. Oh, and I forgot to mention earlier that the footrest was beyond useless for anyone over 5 feet, since the footrest did not extend out of the legrest. Two omissions/mistakes from the seat design which you would not expect at this stage in the F Class competition...


Bed mode (which shows the not-quite-flatness even at full recline)


A different view of the Bed Mode - doesn't the seat seem very lumpy?


Actually, ignore what I said earlier about not having enough time to sleep - I sat in the seat in bed mode, and soon find myself dangerously close to the ultimate in public transport embarassment - snoring! There was very little else to do for the remainder of the flight so I just lay there relaxing and enjoying the flight.

The flight was drawing to a close and the seatbelt sign was switched on at 11:50. My jacket was returned to me, and the FA also noticed that I still had the tube of hot chilli sauce from the meal tray - she asks me:
"Did you want to take that with you?"
"Yes, I'm planning to give it to my friend in Japan since it tastes really quite good"
"Oh, in that case, let me go and get a few more for you!"
(I was thankful, but expected her to come back with maybe 2-3 more at most)

She comes back.
"Here you go!"
".... (A brief moment of stunned silence) Wow, thank you so much!!"

She had given me a small plastic bag with literally 15 tubes of the hot chilli paste! This sort of thing really leaves a good impression for a long time (I'm still smiling while thinking back, a month later!) and I was very grateful for her kind gesture. As I told you, it was an excellent crew on the flight today. The landing gears were extended five minutes later, and we landed at Narita soon after.

Video of the landing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdJ9ETtDi-g

We arrived at the gate on-time at 12:07 and I thanked the crew profusely for a wonderful flight. When they said "We hope to see you again soon!" by the door, it seemed that extra bit more heartfelt than usual - it gave me a spring on my step as I made my way to passport controls. In yet more good luck, immigrations was completely empty and my suitcase was one of the first to come out, which meant I was walking out of the doors into the arrivals hall at literally 12:15. 8 minutes from gate to arrivals hall - a new record at NRT?


One last photo after arrival...


I sent off a box of gifts to my mum's friend in Nara by takkyubin, and then went to arrange my hotel for the night. Holiday Inn Tobu was cheaper than I saw it online at JPY6400 (excl. breakfast) - I went for it, and amazingly the next bus to the hotel was in just 10 minutes. And to complete the string of good luck for the day, the hotel check-in agent told me that I was upgraded from the ancient-looking East Wing to the newer West Wing. If only every day of travel worked so seamlessly!
After leaving my things in the room, I went into Tokyo to meet my friend that visited me in Korea just a few days back. We had a great sushi dinner and I came back to the hotel by 11pm-ish, and tried to get some sleep despite the "kid on xmas eve" feeling of anticipation for the flight tomorrow...

=============

I normally prefer to upload all the flights at once, but on this occasion I decided to upload each flight one by one. Writing them seems to take a lot longer than usual so I wanted to start off the TR before it gets ridiculously late!

Hopefully I can upload the next instalment in the near future...

PS. If you're wondering what the title "Two servings of Japanese hospitality" is talking about, it relates to the next flight - you'll understand when you read it.

sobore

Very nice report. Well done!

Gatwick Alan

Hopefully I can upload the next instalment in the near future...

Hopefully you can because i am thoroughly enjoying reading it!!

mjcewl1284

On an HKG-TPE hop on CX, I had an FA reprimand me for taking a photo of the cabin. Didn't really stop me from doing so, I just had to be wary of any FAs walking through the aisles. I guess it's an Asian thing.

Nice TR.

Kevincm

Sounds like one heck of a crew you had there stargold. I'm not jealous at all...

much

Excellent and interesting to see the service that can be provided... as well as the little things such as giving you a pile of hot sauce

As premium redemptions get fewer and fewer out of LHR, Asiana is looking more and more the top flight airline i've yet to try..

Nicely done - looking forward to the final parts ^^^

patgarrett

Great report. Looking at those shots of the aircraft wing, it looks as though your camera sensor needs a clean though!

Guava

Thanks for this wonderful trip report! I am glad that NH has started to open up their F award seats for miles, hopefully, SQ will change their mind soon re: their new F.

Due to the economy and business downturn, I can no longer fly paid NH F in the foreseable future and am stuck with the horrendous OZ C at least until year end. OZ is heavily discounting its C class fares these days as Korean won falters against major currencies and OZ is taking advantage of that. OZ C catering isn't bad for inter-Asia travel but their transpacific flights out of ICN just sucks and the cabin, almost empty. However, OZ also slashed prices by a lot and if anyone is interested, you can buy the OZ discounted business class fares and upgrade to OZ F. If you fly OZ F out of LAX, they still serve caviar so if NH no longer provides traditional caviar service, the OZ F alternative may still be a viable alternative. Though of course, aside from caviar, NH F is still superior in every other way.

For me at least, I can still use my Bank of America Asiana AMEX to upgrade from OZ C to F for only 20,000 miles each way, which is way cheaper than what NH charges for similar transpac upgrade in miles. It seems to me, the NH F service has degraded somewhat based on what gleff reported and I am eagerly anticipating your inputs. Not sure if it's any consolation for me, the way I look at it is, getting stuck with OZ still the end of year while NH F degrades a little bit probably isn't so bad after all. Not sure I'd be willing to fork 45,000 miles one-way to upgrade a NH C to F these days given what's being reported recently. However, I would kill to have your lucky NH F dealy out of NRT where you got to sit in NH F for an extra 5 hours.

NoY

Another wonderful report Stargold ^ Thanks for posting!
I am really looking forward to my first NH F flight - NRT-ORD - not til next year though

MatthewLAX

Excellent report Stargold ^

SFflyer123

Fantastic!

Moomba

Really nice report stargold

stargold

Thank you everone, for your very kind comments I need all the encouragement I can get to do the next - what will no doubt end up being a marathon length - report on the NH F segment

I've been stopped from taking photos of the NH F cabin before departure - the FA said "You can take photos once we are at cruising altitude, but not while we are on the ground". But I think the OZ FA was just curious about why anyone would want to take so many pictures of the cabin itself!

It was certainly one of the most "fun" service that I've received on an Asian airline - it was nice that the crew felt comfortable enough to joke around with me. Maybe because I'm still quite young, I remind them of their younger brother?

OZ is definitely one of the lesser known and underrated options in Star, perhaps mainly because of the relatively small scale of international operations. They do fly to LHR, CDG and FRA but there is no F on those flights, so you have to fly to/from the US in order to enjoy the F service. In any case, even in C, they are really rather excellent and definitely a worthy redemption alternative to SQ etc.

I guess I should be flattered that you think I took these pics with a DSLR? It's actually a really cheap Canon P&S, and the dust spots you see on that photo is the dirty window!

I could imagine - I'm only too familiar with what it feels like, to wait for an NH F flight. I hope they still have the same standard of catering for your flight as they did on mine - as you will see, it was really, really good.

stargold

Actually, NH has always had F reward seats open for miles - it's just that availability has been so scarce that most people gave up after repeated searches of the ANA tool for the entire year For example, I did LHR-NRT in F last year as well...

I dunno, I quite like OZ C and consider them one of the best C products from the "older generation" of angled-flat seats. The seat is pretty comfortable, the service is usually great and the F&B service is usually to my taste.

The caviar issue has been discussed at the NH forum and my guess is that NH has suspended the traditional caviar service ex-NRT due to the l'Oasis menu, perhaps because the meal creators felt that the traditional caviar service didn't go very well with the rest of the meal. The usual caviar service is still available on flights to Japan, so I don't think it's an issue of cost cutting.

I wouldn't say that NH F service has degraded in any significant way, except perhaps I noticed the quality of the Japanese meal has gone down - it used to be absolutely breathtaking back in 2001, and pretty good last year ex-LHR as well (although the Western meal on the other hand was really quite fantastic). In fact, the l'Oasis meal is simply one of the best meals I have eaten on an aircraft, ever. In terms of the quality of service, quality of wine etc, it's still the same high standards as they used to be a few years ago.

Probably best to wait till I have uploaded my NH segment report, and then we can talk about how ecstatic I was about the extra 5 hours of flight...