Review of Air Japan flight from Tokyo to Bangkok in Economy

Introduction

Given that my wife is from Thai origin, we decided that after a short trip of nine days in Japan, it was time for us to hop over to Thailand to meet her family. While Thailand is connected to Thailand with several airlines, I decided to choose Air Japan mainly for the price they were asking. 238 USD for two persons to Thailand including luggage (23kg) and an onboard meal was a bargain at the time of booking.

Though given that I booked the flights from Amsterdam to Tokyo to Bangkok & to home already well in advance of actually making any plan we had the inconvenience of travelling back to Tokyo from Osaka and simply losing an entire day to travelling.

To Tokyo Narita

As connections from Osaka to Narita were somewhat limited and/or on a inconvenient time, we decided to fly to Haneda and book us the Airport Limousine bus from Haneda to Narita as you could read in my previous report. The busride itself is pleasant and convenient.

Tokyo Narita Terminal 1

The bus drops you off in front of all terminals (bus on the right), but as our departure would be from terminal 1, we obviously decided to disembark here.

The terminal felt spacious and wasn't overly crowded. It was also convenient that the bus stop was right in front of our check-in area.

The only odd thing about Air Japan is that you are not able to check in online by yourself and that the system will check you in roughly five to four hours prior to departure. I received a boarding pass for my wife, however I received a notification from Air Japan that they were unable to check me in and that I needed to visit one of the counters for my papers to be verified for some odd reason.

Being a bit ignorant to that specific mail, I tried to check in online via one of those self check-in counters only to receive one boarding pass and luggage tag for my wife giving me once again a notification that I needed to meet a ground attendant.

Upon notifying one of the staff members about my issue, she told me to follow her and guided me to one of the staffed counters of Air Japan, which was actually a good thing as I was allowed to jump the queu. The friendly ground attendant checked my documents and the issue and didn't really understand why I wasn't able to check in as the system for her did not give her any issue. Initially after ten minutes or so she finally managed to bypass the system and checked me in. I kindly thanked her for this and went looking for my wife who was about to drop her luggage in one of those kiosks.

A similar drop-off counter was being used like in Narita and was easy to be used. I kindly took the luggage of my wife and put it for her on the belt, while the completed her steps for luggage to be checked in.

Security and passport control were a breeze to pass through with almost nobody present and once cleared, we were met with this spectacular view over the apron.  Not very busy today with just a 777 of Air New Zealand &  an A320 of Air China.

After clearing security & immigration, it was now time for us to do some shopping for presents and snacks for us and friends. Obviously my wife found this cat and needed her photograph with it!

While waiting for my wife to complete her shopping list, I decided to take another view of the apron, which as of now was still not that busy.

Plenty of shops around!

I.A.S.S. Superior Lounge -NOA- Terminal 1

After the shopping was done, we decided to pay a visit to I.A.S.S. Superior Lounge which I gained access to through my Priority Pass. The lounge itself is alright and not too bad, but it was rather warm as the sun was shining on the lounge all day.

It however does provide plenty of seating divided into two different rooms. 

One that was a bit cozier and designed with darker colours

And one that felt more like it was in sterile condition ready for someone to be operated on.

A food station was available with some cooked food. A salad bar was available on the left and it did have some soft drinks, beer, juices and Japanese wines on offer.

The warm options from the food station.

The food options I opted for were the Croquette Set & Japan Curry Rice, which according to the chart came with pork and beef, yet I was only able to detect vegetables. Took a Taiyaki as dessert.

In the other room you could find some more options to drink including soft drink, ice and alcoholic beverages such as beer & Japanese wines.

A close up of the wine options which consisted out of a Japanese Red wine on the left and the fridge contained a white wine and two different types of sake.

And of course it's highly mandatory to create a self draughting machine to pour you a beer and/or high ball (Japanese mix drink of Whiskey and Soft drink/Soda). Coffee and/tea were on the right side 

Some additional fruits and yoghurt, peanuts, edamame and crisps were available on the right side of the coffee machine in case you didn't fancy something heavy

Before leaving the lounge, the lounge finally decided to lift the curtains showing us this pretty picture of a Korean B787 while the sun was setting.

On our way to our departure gate & Status update.

Seating was definitely not sufficient for the amount of flights that would depart from our pier, so we sat down at a different gate as ours was way too occupied, but with thirty minutes to departure, no aircraft was seen on the platform.

About ten minutes prior to our scheduled departure, an announcement was made by ground attendants that our aircraft was delayed by two hours and to visit the gate to pick up some water and snacks.

As I was checking on flightradar24, I already knew that we would not depart in two hours as the aircraft that was going to bring us over was still stuck in Seoul Incheon due to the snowstorm in Seoul grounding most flights.

About an hour later, we received a dreadful notification once again that our flight was now further delayed to 22:30. Once again I checked flightradar24 now and saw that our aircraft had finally left Seoul with a delay of four hours. Once again we were told to visit staff at gate for an additional round of water and snacks if you opted for it.

By this time my wife and me were completely broken as we've been traveling the entire day knowing that we only had about four hours of sleep in a hotel in Bangkok what was suppose to be ten or so as we would continue to our next destination in Thailand.

At last we finally had an aircraft attached to our gate who was going to bring us over to Thailand.

The aircraft that was going to bring us over was  JA801A, a 13.3 year old Boeing 787-8 that was newly delivered to ANA in September 2011 before being changed to Air Japan in March 2018. This specific bird is actually the 8th Boeing 787 to be build and only the third to be in commercial services. It is configured in an all-economy configuration, though I'm not completely sure how many seats are on board.

By now my wife was called to the gate as ground attendants informed her that seat 05B was unavailable due to technical reasons and was asked to move seats. My wife who wanted to sit with me obviously asked whether it was ok if I could be moved to, so both my wife and me were eventually moved from 5A/5B to 4D/4E, which was quite a downer again considering the massive delay we already had.

Boarding was eventually called at around 22.15 and went smoothly.

NQ1 to Bangkok

Upon embarking the aircraft, we were greeted by two friendly flight attendants, though no word was spoken about the massive delay that has occured. 

In the picture below you can find the our seats for today's flight. They looked well maintained and quite comfy, yet they turned out to be one of the worst seats for a six hour flight and it did really hurt my back as it was quite hard.

As Air Japan is the low-cost carrier of ANA, I suspected legroom to be worse, yet the legroom was quite decent.

The seat itself didn't have a lot to offer as no IFE was installed, yet it contained a USB-A & C charger, a phone/tablet holder, a button to call your flight attendant or activate your reading light and the obvious table with a separate cupholder.

Both Table & Phone holder were clean.

The literature one can find in your seat pocket contained of a BoB Menu, Safety Card & a waste bag.

The buy on board menu wasn't overly large, though it did have enough to provide you with enough food for a seven hour flight in case you got hungry, though I pre-ordered a meal when I bought my ticket.

The cabin.

So in the end we finally departed around 22.42 from Tokyo Narita giving us a total delay of about 5 hours and 2 minutes. once we were about 30 minutes into the flight, the flight attendants came by to serve us our pre-ordered meal and asked us whether we would have any drink from the menu. For some odd reasons Air Japan offers those seated in row 1 to 10 a limited selection of complimentary drinks, while the other cabin have to pay for all drinks. 

As I asked for a Sayama-cha (which is green tea), the flight attendant warned me about the heat of the tea. The tea itself was not just warm, but it was bloody hot to a level that one can burn his hands or mouth if not careful. I don't think it is a wise choice to serve drinks at this temperature.

My meal I pre-ordered was an ''Omusubi Bento'', which was described by Air Japan as;

''The lunch box features rice balls cut in half to show the beautiful colors of the vegetables inside. Enjoy together with the side dishes''

While my wife had the ''Chicken Namban Rice'', which was described by Air Japan as;

Air Japan gives an original twist to popular local Miyazaki Prefecture dish Chicken Namban.

All I can say is that both dishes were a disaster. They were very soggy, tasteless and my Omusubi Bento even made me feel like I wanted to throw up for a short period due to the taste I had in my mouth.

Given the taste and the feeling of vomiting, I decided to quickly pay a visit to one of the lavatories in the front out of precaution, which was yet quite clean

Albeit no amenities other than some handfoam, though I must admit that the state of the aircraft was far better than the 787 I had with Air India, which was much younger than this specific bird.

About four hours into the flight and unable to get any sleep due to the neighbour next to us who was snoring so loud during the entirety of the flight, I kindly asked one of the flight attendants for another cup of green tea who was now served at a better temperature than my previous. Flight attendants also started to move people around directly next to the snoring passenger as it was quite unbearable for many of them, though that specific passenger was quite a nuisance with his snoring for the entire front cabin, yet I had the feeling that the flight attendants didn't really know what to do with him.

The aircraft was equipped with WiFi, though they prices they were charging were quite steep and I wouldn't even bother paying those amounts for it. 7 USD for just 30 min?

About 6.5 hours into the flight, we were already into our descent to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi and about 3.44 am we were parked at one of the furthest gates of the main terminal resulting in a total delay of approximately 4 hours 44 minutes. The only good thing of this delayed arrival was that immigration was deserted and it took no longer than a single minute to clear them.

By the time we reached baggage claim, luggage was already on belt waiting to be picked up. 

We quickly grabbed our luggage and made it to one of the taxi's to bring us to our hotel nearby to get somewhat of a fresh shower and a short sleep of approximately 3 hours as we already had to be back by about 10 am or so for our next flight, so the impression left by Air Japan wasn't the best one.

Thanks for stopping by!