Review of Asiana Airlines flight Seoul → Bangkok in Economy

Introduction

After five wonderful days in South Korea where we've seen a lot of nice and interesting places and above all had some excellent food, it was time for us to continue our journey to Southeast Asia.

The route Seoul → Bangkok has a lot of options to take ranging from AirAsia X to Korean Air, but as my wife always told me that she wanted to try out the Airbus A380 once in her life, I decided to book her this flight as a surprise with probably the most expensive price tag for that day ranging to 820 USD for 2 persons. As a comparison, AirAsia X was charging you 140 USD per person. 

Flight

After having a late lunch, my wife and me took our luggage from our hotel and walked to Hong-Ik University Subway Station to grab the AREX Stoptrain to Incheon Airport. The ticket for one person was roughly 4500 KRW if I remember correctly, which translates to 3.5 USD per person, and will bring you to the airport in roughly 1 hour and 15 minutes.

With about 3 hours to our departure, we arrived by AREX and went up to the departure hall. Given that we arrived in Terminal 2 with China Airlines like 5 days ago, I found terminal 1 to be more pleasant and better designed. 

For me it's still early to even consider christmas decorations, but I guess Seoul Incheon thought it to be the time already to do so, which they did in full force :).

In the departure hall we checked one of the many tv screens to see where we've had to go and it seems that we had to go to the right to sections A to C, which were being used by Asiana.

Unlike the overly complicated ATM machines in South Korea, the self check-in service via their counter went much smoother and was more up-to-standard to European Airlines. We grabbed our boarding cards in paper format and our luggage tags.

Once we had our tags attached to our bags, me and my wife went up to the self-service drop off section, which had little to no line.

The process of the self-service check-in was very smooth from the beginning to the end and was very easy to understand. It took no longer than five minutes to complete. Well done Asiana.

It always surprises me how tedious immigration can be to enter the country, which took us more than a solid hour to clear, while exiting the country was flawless and done in a matter of a minute with no real person checking up on us. Security took no more than five minutes either to clear, so we were passed all the formalities in like 6 a 7 minutes.

Given that we were flying with Asiana meant that I was able to try out their lounge with my priority pass. 

Upon entering the lounge, which is on the right side for us, I checked in with the very friendly ground attendant which gave us entry in a matter of minute when all the formalities with my Priority Pass were handled. She kindly told us that no announcements were made and that we should pay attention to our flight. She wished us already a pleasant trip in advance.

The Business Lounge East of Asiana was pretty quiet with plenty of seating,  some food and it even had showers available if you opted for them, though they were on request. 

Another visual look of the lounge.

The views of the lounge are excellent, though unfortunately all seats here were taken by people and it was like playing musical chairs if someone left with the majority of guests, so I didn't really bother about it myself and found a quiet seating section with my wife in the lounge.

The most important section of the lounge :). Just a joke, but alcohol beverages were available ranging from a limited selection of liquors, wine, beers & soft drinks.

Coffee & Tea were available at both ends, but the food selection was to be found on the end of the lounge which was a buffet.

Considering that this is Asiana's hub, I found the food options to be rather on the limited side as you can find the all the options in the following three photos below.

Sat down with a glass of wine and the food options I took.

With about ten minutes to boarding, me and my wife made our way to our gate for today's departure and were wished a pleasant journey again by the same ground attendant that checked us in. She did a really good job remembering things about most travelers and had a good oversight on everything that went on.

And here's the beast (HL7640) that will bring us to Bangkok today. An Airbus A380-800 that has been delivered to Asiana in October 2016 and was 7.4 years old at the time of flying.

Registration:   HL7640
Aircraft Type:  Airbus A380-840
Aircraft Serial: 230
First Flight:       17th May 2016
Powered by:     4x RR Trent 970 

The seating section in proximity of our gate wasn't overly crowded, which it usually tends to be with an Airbus A380 despite the aircraft being fully booked today and boarding was eventually called right on time.

The entire boarding process from start to finish took only 30 minutes, which surprised me a lot as I've had my fair share of A380s with Emirates and those process' were never as smooth as this. Three jetbridges were being used with me and my wife taking the right one to go to the upper deck.

The remainder of our aircraft for today's flight.

If you fancy to book Asiana's J class on their A380, this is what it looks like.

And here's our seat 73A & B for today's flight.

Pillow & Blanked were already provided.

Legroom of those seats were amazing with an additional storage bin to my left, however I found the seating to be rather uncomfortable with the seating section for the bottom being way too hard. It really started to hurt about three or four hours into the flight and I can't imagine if I had to take this seat on a flight longer than 6 hours.

The view of my window seat.

You can find four items as literature in your seatpocket, which contained a sickbag, a legal document stating what items can be brought into the country and what no, a dutyfree magazine and Asiana's safety card.

No individual air vents were installed, although it didn't bother me much as the cabin temperature on this flight was kept at a reasonable temperature.

Complimentary headphones were handed out and were of poor quality.

View of the small economy cabin in upper deck.

IFE System was somewhat basic, but easy to navigate with a decent list of movies and shows.

Pushback was performed five minutes past our scheduled departure time and took a while to start up. Guess that's one more of the downsides of having four engines attached to the aircraft rather than two :).

However 10 a 15 minutes past our scheduled departure, we were rolling for departure to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi.

About 45 minutes into the flight, the flight attendants came around to serve us our meal for today's flight and choices were chicken with pasta or bibimbap. I, of course, took their famous bibimbap, which to be fair was quite tasty in my perspective, though I'm not a bibimbap expert myself, so don't judge me on it ;). It was served with some kimchi, a soup and fresh fruit and I opted for a Kloud beer.

Real cutlery was being used on this flight and it also came with a guide for bibimbap and how to prepare it. It was a nice gesture for those who are unfamiliar with this type of cuisine.

My wife however took the other option which was served with a bun and butter, a small salad and a desert. She was quite disappointed with the quality of the meal and regretted not to go with the bibimbap either.

Coffee & Tea were served shortly after.

It took about another thirty minutes after their coffee/tea service for them to start cleaning the cabin and I also took this opportunity to pay a visit to one of the toilets on board, which to be fair were still in a very clean state as they haven't been used that much by people given the meal service.

It however did not contain a lot of amenities. A lonely toothbrush package and some soap were to be found here.

Flight attendants came by once a hour with complimentary drinks, which were just glasses of water and/or orange juice. I grabbed about two hours prior to landing, one of the orange juices, which was very chemically tasting.

And while I was sipping that chemical orange juice, I was listening to some older Korean songs. Call me old-fashioned, but somehow I can appreciate those older songs much more than the ones being published nowadays.

With about 30 minutes to landing, the aircraft was in the descent to Bangkok.

Docking into our stand while a Boeing 737-800 of Easter Jet was pushing back for it's return flight to Seoul.

Immigration had a huge line, but went at a steady pace as it took only 25 minutes or so to clear…. Normally I would have joined my wife in the queu for Thai passports, but unfortunately only the self-service immigration counters were open for them, so I had to queu for all passports. It didn't really matter though as it took another 15 minutes after immigration for our luggage to arrive…. Another downside of an A380 :).

We booked us a night at Siam Mandarin Airport Hotel which offers free shuttle service in both directions as we had to catch a new flight the following day. So see you soon!