Review of Korean Air flight from Seoul to San Francisco in Economy

This series covers a trip to Shanghai, please refer back to Part 1 for the introduction. KE has maintained 2x daily service to SFO, but they announced they were going to downgrade KE25/26 from B77W to B789 during the low season. This change is likely not surprising since CI at the same time announced the suspension of CI15/16 during the low season keeping just a single B77W daily. If we would have known this before booking, we would have taken KE23 instead since the B789 is a large drop in comfort in Y from the B77W as will be shown in this report.

This report will cover the flight from Seoul-Incheon to San Francisco and a look at the KAL Prestige Class Lounge. As a reminder, the routing for this trip:

Pre-flight

We start this report exiting transit security and taking the escalator up to the departures level.

There is a lot of construction still on-going in T2 and it is not easy to navigate to the lounges since there is a complete lack of signage. We just stopped by an information desk and the agent told us it was across from Gate 249, which made things a little easier.

Our destination is finally in sight. You have to go up an escalator/elevator and then cross a bridge to the entrance.

Prestige class Lounge East

There are two Prestige Class lounges in T2, we used the East Lounge since it was closer to the exit of security. In hindsight, we should have probably gone to the West Lounge deeper into the terminal closer to our gate since we were met with an over crowded lounge with no privacy. We eventually were able to secure 2 seats next to each other so at least we could at least partially sit together. The lounge was packed with a large block of DL/KE TPACs about to depart.

Wi-Fi is available, but ICN offers Wi-Fi itself so not really needed.

The buffets had a decent spread across 3 islands, but as you can tell they are all very crowded. Drink stations were located around the perimeter walls.

A picture of the bar that had self-serve wine. All beer, cocktails, and liquor had to be requested from the bartender.

I wasn't hungry, so grabbed an espresso for myself and some snacks for my son from the buffet.

The lounge was just not very comfortable with the throngs of people awaiting the TPAC departure block so we left after 30 minutes and just went to find some of the kid's zones (Tayo and Pororo themed). We spent the rest of our layover at one of the kid's zones that are dispersed throughout the terminal.

boarding

Our plane was due to board at 19:20, so we started our long trek across T2 about 20 minutes ahead of boarding.

The architecture is good in T2, but with all of the continued construction, the walkways are very narrow and difficult to navigate with almost no signage.

We arrived at our gate just as they were sending the wheelchairs in. We saw some families gathering near pre-boarding so we started walking over there when an agent approached us to check our boarding passes and took us to the front of the SkyPriority line to board first.

Boarding started promptly at 19:20 and we will lead the pack as we head down the escalators to board.

As always, there was a cart with earphones at the entrance of L2 and there was a handful of crew to greet us at the threshold to scan our boarding passes and direct us into the aisle towards the first Y cabin.

Flight

A look at the first of the two Y cabins in their 3-3-3 configuration as standard (not as nice as JL's 2-4-2).

Our row. At OLCI, the flight looked very full, so I changed our A/C/D seat selection to A/B/C since I expected it to be a full flight (which it was in both classes). We selected seats in the “Preferred” section (rows 28-31) which they try and charge ~$70 for, but were complimentary with our SkyTeam Elite Plus statuses. There are no differences in the seat, they are just in the front of the plane to deplane quicker. There is a galley and lavatories in between the Y/J cabins so it is quite noisy in this area with constant clanging of dishes and people sneaking under the curtains to use the J lavatories (I'll talk about the crew later, but they didn't handle this well and were very passive aggressive).

Pre-placed on all seats was a pillow, blanket, amenity kit, and ~300mL water bottle.

Another look at the seats.

The seat pitch feels similar to the A330 at ~33" and an inch smaller than the B77W. That said, it is still better than what is offered by most carriers in Y.

The seat back pocket is smaller and doesn't have a divider for the literature.

The substantial seat back literature offerings: safety card, barf bag, duty free order form, Morning Calm, and SkyShop catalog. There is no Wi-Fi on the B789s yet.

The seat back contains a ~11" IFE screen, which is non-tilting so makes it hard to see when the person in front reclines. There are no remotes, so all controls are on the IFE, which was poor placement. Some people were sleeping forwards on their tray tables and the seats recline deep into your personal space so they kept turning on their call buttons and reading lights inadvertently all through the flight with their heads, which is annoying since they are quite bright lights and just kept flashing on/off all flight. All around, I found these seats to be poorly designed.

The audio jack and USB-A are on the bottom of the screen, which is less desirable since it means you need to unplug your headphones to let passengers out. The B77W, A332, and B739 all had the audio jacks in the arm rest.

Between the seats is the universal power outlet.

The tray table is bifold, but lacks the external cup holder found on the other aircraft types.

No individual air vents on the B789. KE does keep their cabins on the warm side 23-25C, but it was comfortable on this flight and colder than on the SFO-ICN leg.

The large pillow and thin blanket provided.

The amenity kit contains the dental hygiene kit and slippers.

As a Hanjin subsidiary, there is of course Jeju pure water.

The floors were clean and there are limited obstructions in the foot wells.

One nice feature of the B789 J cabin is that they didn't take delivery with overhead bins in the center section. It really made the cabin look bigger and more spacious than the B77Ws. Although the B77W is a better Y product, the B789 is probably a better J product.

As we settled in, a FA approached us with the kid's toy set and kid's headphones. We declined the headphones since we travel with his own, but you can check Part 1 (SFO-ICN) to see this product. We already got the Pororo water painting book ICN-PVG, but took it as well. The FA confirmed the CHML orders for both meals and labeled his chair.

I didn't notice this before, but they did have a very nice cabin etiquette reminder in the back of the book.

Our view is of the massive GEnx-1B engine outside.

Once boarding completed, we closed the front doors and had the safety video play. During the safety video, the purser came out and welcomed us onboard and thanked my wife and I for our ST Elite Plus statuses.

We pushed back at 20:02 and started the long 20-minute taxi across ICN.

We aligned onto runway 33L and took off at 20:22.

We had a hard banking u-turn to the right to start our trek east taking us just over the city center of Seoul. It was unfortunately cloudy so we couldn't see anything.

About 25 minutes after take-off, the special meals were walked out. KE offers a lot of options for special meals especially in the vegan/vegetarian space. For CHML, there are 3 options for entrees ex-ICN (beef bulgogi, spaghetti, and BBQ chicken) and you can choose an entry for each meal service. Since we already had the beef bulgogi in Part 2 (ICN-PVG), we chose the BBQ chicken and spaghetti for this flight.

There is no drink service, we are just handed the tray. The tray contains a lot of food and a lot of packaged items. There was fruit slices, a pasta salad, roll with strawberry jam and butter, banana milk drink, banana (likely the mid-flight snack), brownie, ketchup, the main, bamboo cutlery, and a refreshing towel.

The meal unwrapped.

The fruit ex-ICN is the same as before with just an apple wedge and slice of orange. The pasta salad with ham and vegetables was quite good and our son ate this instead of the main.

The main was 2 pieces of BBQ chicken with potato croquettes and vegetables. The croquettes were not crispy, but had good flavor.

KE publishes their menus in all classes online (https://www.koreanair.com/us/en/in-flight/onboard-service/dining/first) and a couple of days before departure they even provide pictures of the dishes so if you do your homework, there should be no surprises in-flight. The menus and meal pictures are also available in the KE app if you want to check it in-flight. I was excited to try the bibimnoodle as a break from bibimbap, but they swapped it to bibimbap in-flight. Of the 4 flights, our first flight was the only one that had the correct menu posted online. The catering was just not very enticing on this flight with beef stew being a redundant protein option and only offering a salad as the 3rd choice.

With the options available, I just went with the safe option: bibimbap. For drinks, I just had a cup of water and a pineapple juice for my son. The meal tray is full and substantial quantity and had the expected metal cutlery and refreshing wipes. They threw snacks onto every tray since they don't do a formal mid-flight service.

We get fermented vegetables for starter as expected and 2 packaged mochis for dessert.

The seaweed soup, while not photogenic it tastes good.

The bibimbap ingredients before mixing, there are a lot more items in here than we saw ex-SFO.

Sesame oil, gochujang, and rice.

The mixed product.

My wife was a little more adventurous and went for the beef stew. Her tray as delivered, which differs quite a bit. She gets the same salad we had PVG-ICN and a cake for dessert. In addition, there are cheese/crackers and bread/butter.

The main was what you would expect for beef stew. The meat was flavorful, but could be tenderer for stew meat. The scalloped potatoes were a good accompaniment.

After the carts retreated, coffee service was followed by tea service. For tea service, they pour hot water in your cup and offer you a selection of tea bags to choose from (black tea, green tea, and brown rice green tea). My choice of brown rice green tea.

After the trays were cleared, the cabin lights were slowly dimmed as we left the eastern coast of Honshu to start our trek across the Pacific.

I didn't watch anything to keep the light reduced for my son's sleep, but will briefly introduce the IFE that is available gate-to-gate. The B789s still have the old interface, which is kind of clunky to navigate with a lot of clicking to cycle through menus, but the content is quite good, you can find the content here (https://www.koreanair.com/in-flight/entertainment?hl=en) so I won’t bore you.

We reached the sunrise around 01:35 (ICN time), which engulfed the whole cabin in light. Since we departed at night, no one had thought to dim their windows. The crew eventually took control and auto-dimmed the entire cabin (which remained locked for the remainder of the flight).

I was in the window seat and couldn't get out the entire flight since my son was sleeping, but there were the typical mid-flight snacks available. The crew was not through the cabin frequently at all, I only saw them 1-2x the entire 6h block between meal services. There is no formal mid-flight snack service on this flight.

There was no subtlety at breakfast time, the crew did not gradually turn on the mood lighting, but rather just turned the cabin lights on full blast which was quite jarring at 04:40 (ICN time) about 1h40m out from SFO.

As always, special meals are walked out first, but no drinks are offered. The tray as received, which was overflowing. For this meal we got him the spaghetti just so that we could see what all 3 meals options looked like ex-ICN.

The tray contents were heavily packaged with a mango drink, blueberry muffin, brownie, biscuits, 2 slices of fruit, and the main. CHML gets bamboo cutlery and a refreshing wipe. Our son didn't touch the main since he was still groggy from his sleep, visually it didn't entice me either since it was covered in sauce.

For the second meal service, the carts operate in the opposite direction (back to front) so we had a long wait for them to reach us. There were 2 options: rice porridge or scrambled eggs.

By the time the cart reached us, they ran out of the rice porridge so we got stuck with the Western option along with the rest of the first 4 rows. My wife found it amusing that even though they ran out of the rice porridge, they still told every passenger: "For breakfast we have a rice porridge or scrambled eggs as the options," only to apologize when every person requested the rice porridge. The tray as received. We get a yogurt, 2 slices of fruit, a packaged muffin, and a water to accompany the main.

The eggs were grainy albeit edible, but the hash brown was soggy. This is probably the worst tray of food we got on this trip.

The seats have some serious recline, which actually shrinks your personal space a lot. The crew tried to keep people's seat backs fully upright during meals, but this was rarely followed especially for the breakfast service.

Luckily I finished my coffee after the meal, before it ended up in my lap. There is barely enough clearance for their mugs, any other drink would get launched into your lap if the person in front reclines abruptly like this person did to me.

The trays were collected as we get our first sight of land with Mt Shasta in the horizon.

The rest of the flight we were treated to a nice approach into SFO on a sunny, clear day. Unfortunately, KE had kept the windows locked so I had to battle the B787s terrible tinting that makes everything yellowish.

Making landfall over Point Arena and its little lighthouse.

Reaching the bay.

Crossing over Tiburon and Sausalito.

We were then treated with a nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Presidio.

Downtown SF.

We crossed right over SFO before passing by Foster City and the San Mateo Hayward Bridge offering some glimpses of the Salt Ponds in the distance.

Aerial of SQL.

Great views down the Peninsula as we make our u-turn over Palo Alto.

Crossing over Bair Island.

Crossing over Foster City.

Crossing the sea wall.

We have a smooth landing on runway 28R at 14:41 for an on-time arrival.

A UA B772 landing behind us as we start our taxi back to Concourse A.

As we approach our gate, there was a PD ERJ-195 off to the side. I can't imagine taking an E-Jet from YYZ to SFO (~2200 miles).

We pull into gate A10 at 14:50 to take us full circle (we departed from the same gate on KE 24) next to a QR A35K.

We only had the QR flight ahead of us at immigration, which is good since there was a block of ~5 TATLs arriving after us. Arrivals into SFO aren't too bad and we were quickly in our ride home ahead of rush hour. With that I will conclude this series and look at KE's Y products.

flight information

Korean Air, KE25
Equipment: Boeing B787-900 [HL8082, delivered April 2017]
Departure: 20:00 (ATD: 20:22)
Arrival: 14:40 (ATA: 14:41)
Flight time: 10:19