Review of Peach flight from Hong Kong to Osaka in Economy

After my long-haul flight into HKG, I took the train into central Hong Kong. After a delicious dim sum dinner at Tim Ho Wan…

…and some (rainy) views of the city from the mall…

…it was time to head back to HKG for a relatively short hop over to Osaka.

BOOKING

Peach Aviation is a quirky little low-cost carrier headquartered at Kansai International Airport in Japan. They mostly fly domestically within Japan with their fleet of A320-family aircraft, but they do fly some short-haul international routes to major airports in eastern Asia. 

This was a relatively last-minute ticket, booked about 10 days in advance. The total cost from HKG to KIX was HK$2,115, which includes the cost of a standard window seat and one checked bag (my US-sized carry-on was a bit larger than the Peach carry-on bag size). My ticket was booked as a "Value Peach" fare class; the airline has since changed their fare designations but this most closely aligns with their current "Standard" fare.

CHECK-IN/AIRPORT

Peach has quite a few flights per day between Hong Kong and Osaka, but there's a gap between around 6pm (the last evening flights that arrive around midnight) and midnight (the first redeye/overnight flights). This means that the check-in counter closes for a while and didn't reopen until around 2.5 hours prior to my flight. As you probably guessed, Peach also doesn't provide any sort of mobile boarding passes, so everyone has to check in at the counter. There's precious little to do on the landside at HKG, but there was an entertaining virtual "Waterfall Garden" that I sat near for a couple hours…

A queue quickly formed prior to the check-in counter opening, but once the airport agents arrived they quickly handled everyone's check-in and I was on my way to the security checkpoint.

Once I passed security and border control, I was met with an eerily empty Hong Kong airport:

Apart from a handful of groups, it was pretty quiet. I noticed one other flight leaving for Osaka around the same time as mine, but otherwise all of the gates were dark and unoccupied.

I did visit the Plaza Premium Lounge near gate 60 using my Priority Pass membership, but as lounge access is not included with any Peach fare, I won't worry about an in-depth review here.

BOARDING

As the boarding time approached, passengers began forming a queue at the gate. There were no boarding groups and other than families with small children, it did not appear that there was any sort of priority boarding. Oddly enough, this was the exact same gate into which my Lufthansa A340 had arrived just nine hours earlier!

Tonight's flight was aboard JA-825P, a 5-year old Airbus A320. It looked quite amusing parked at a gate meant for some of the largest aircraft in the world–usually these flights depart from the midfield concourse or a remote stand, but there weren't many flights departing at this hour, so we got to use the big-boy parking spots!

The entire plane boarded in around 7 minutes, which was impressive considering my typical US experience of 20-30 minutes to board a similar-sized plane. The flight attendants quickly closed up and we were off!

IN-FLIGHT

It was hard to ignore just how tight these seats are–I'm 5'11", which is fairly average (at least by US standards), and my knees were touching the seat in front of me the entire flight.

Since this was a red-eye flight, I planned to sleep for the duration of the flight. However, I did take the time to order a model of the Peach A320 while we were in-flight–I couldn't miss an opportunity for that sort of memento! Peach actually makes it quite easy to order souvenirs (and food/drinks) via the onboard network and get them delivered to your seat.

Shortly after the model was delivered I nodded off. One thing that did catch me a bit off-guard: the cabin lighting stayed on bright white for the entire flight. I had an eye mask from my previous flight in my backpack, but it seemed quite unnecessary to keep the lights on while people would logically be sleeping.

I woke up as we descended into Osaka to some rainy views of the bay.

Peach operates from the smaller Terminal 2 at Kansai, which means you'll need to take a shuttle to Terminal 1 in order to access the public transit options. The shuttle is free and runs fairly frequently; I walked outside just as the last shuttle was pulling away and I had to wait less than ten minutes for the next one.

VERDICT

Peach Aviation is perfect as a means to an end–I got where I was going on time, and the ticket was half the cost of a traditional airline like Cathay Pacific. The seats are far from comfortable but the cabin crew is friendly and their fleet is modern. Given the chance and the savings, I wouldn't hesitate to book Peach again, though I would certainly go for a more traditional airline first.