Review of China Airlines flight Tokyo → Taipei in Business

introduction

Time flies and it is time to take flights back to Hong Kong, after the 10 days holiday in Kyoto and Tokyo.

For the return flight to Hong Kong, I decided to have a try on another Taiwanese Airline - China Airlines. So therefore the trip towards Hong Kong will also consist of two flights. One from NRT to TPE, and the other one from TPE to HKG, both operated by China Airlines.  

The flight departing from NRT to TPE departed at around 2:30pm. It was somehow an embarrassing time - as NRT locates not near the city center of Tokyo and it takes around 40 minutes to reach the airport from Ueno Tokyo by the fastest train operated by Keisei Electric Railway - The Skyliner. And it may not have much time left for you in the morning for you to enjoy the life in Tokyo. 

After doing some little sightseeing, I finally got on the train at the last minute. 

The train compartment for Skyliner is still that comfortable. 

arriving at the airport

Finally I arrived at Narita International Airport. 

I went directly to the airline counter and got all my boarding passes and the lounge invitation cards at both NRT and TPE. The luggages will be sent to HKG directly and I don’t need to worry about them at TPE. The check in counter at NRT is efficient and I don’t need to wait for a long time before I get checked in. 

There seems many self check-in kiosks at NRT. 

Finally I got the boarding passes and lounge invitation cards for NRT-TPE and TPE-HKG. 

There is a long queue for passing through the security check at NRT, which meets my expectations. But for Business Class, First Class passengers you could enjoy the priority lane at NRT. It saves a lot of time and I pass through the security check within 2 minutes. 

The fast track is really an important feature. is counter is waiting for passengers but not passengers waiting for counters lol.

After doing some shoppings, I finally arrived at the lounge of China Airlines at Narita Airport. Actually the lounge is located not far away from the point of immigration counters of the airport. 

lounge experience

The plants there look so elegant. 

It seems that the best lounge experience at NRT would be the JAL Sakura Lounge. But this time I am not flying with flights of one world alliance members and so I cannot have a try on that lounge again.

The size of the lounge is small but then it is not that crowded. The seats are comfortable. The color used in the lounge is cozy and comfortable. The lounge provides more kinds of food than I expected - have both the cuisine from Chinese style like dim sum, fried rice, fried noodles and Japanese style like sushi. I had a great time in the lounge, as the seat was comfortable and the environment was relaxing as there were not that big crowd of people in the lounge. 

It was time to get on the plane!

it is the boarding time

The boarding gate is at gate 71. And it is not far away from the lounge of China Airlines at NRT. 

What I love NRT is that seems every time no matter which gate, i can enjoy a great view of the iron bird that is going to take me home. 

Here is some information of the plane:

CI101 from NRT to TPE
on 2 Dec 2023 from 14:35 to 17:40 
registration no. : B-18007
Ages: 7.6 years 
Model: Boeing 777-300 ER

As read from the website, the Business Class Cabin of A350 and B777 for China Airlines are well decorated. And it is true. The seat looks cozy and comfortable. There is a lamp next to the seat and seems it is a quite nice feature. It adds elegance to the seat environment. But i dont quite like the red mood light of the cabin though, it would be better if the mood light is yellow / orange. Apart from the overhead compartment, there are two “drawers” at the seat for storage. But personally I think that they are not deep enough. But they should be sufficient for storage of passport, boarding pass, tablet or mobile phone. But the seat looks really nice under the sunset time. 

The interface of the inflight entertainment system looks….well a little bit like those computer systems like Microsoft Windows 8 or something lol. Hope that the system will not have blue screen death then. haha . But I did not pay much attention to the details of the inflight entertainment system. I guess they will provide more choices of TV programs / music related to Taiwan culture so I just skip it.  

Here is the flight map. 

There was a remote control and it could be used as a secondary display for the entertainment system. The response for the monitor and the remote control are both fast and fluent.

lets try the food in the sky

Here comes the food. After boarding there will be a welcome drink. Fruit is also famous in Taiwan and so they pick different kinds of fruit juice as the welcome drink. This time they select the blue berry juices as the welcome drink. And also a bag of crackers was distributed as snack before the meal. 

Afterwards the menu card was distributed. Actually you can also select what you would like to eat before the flight on the internet. I guess that they could redesign the cover of the menu card, seems it does not match the environment of the business class cabin. just some personal preference, haha. 

Anyway, I have picked the Japanese style for dinner. Wow, the look of the dishes amazes me. They are so beautiful that I don't even want to eat them and destroy the setting of the dishes. Rice, soup on the airplane, and the rice is not hard or cold, Well done, China Airlines.

The details of the setting even extends to the chopstick rack. 

Afterwards is dessert time. They offer a Japanese dessert and a plate of fruit for refreshment. For drink, I picked the signature drink tea from China Airlines. With the sweetness from peaches from the tea, it adds a refreshment to me.

some other snapshot of the flight

And here are some snapshots from the plane. The weather was so nice at the beginning and so I think that I could have a chance to see Mount Fuji from the sky. But maybe I missed it, or the mountain was hidden below those clouds. Hope that I will have a chance to see Mount Fuji from the sky in the future. 

An A380 landing under the sun, while we are waiting for take off. 

shadow of our plane with NRT.

At the beginning is the farmland near Chiba Prefecture.

And the sky is so clear that I could enjoy a wonderful view of Tokyo. You could see the tiny Tokyo Skytree, the Tokyo Rainbow Bridge in the picture. 

But it is also nice to see the beautiful evening color of the sky from the airplane, although seems i am not lucky enough to take photos of mount fuji this time,  and enjoyed the tea offered by China Airlines. 

Time flies and finally the flight arrived at TPE. This time I could simply go to the transfer desk and wait for my next flight back to Hong Kong. It is efficient at the transfer desk though. 

Stay Tuned for the next report - from TPE to HKG on China Airlines.