Hello everyone, welcome back to another flight review! Today we’ll be taking a short hop from Beijing to Tokyo Haeda aboard ANA’s The Room. Apologies in advance for the lack of certain details since I took this flight before discovering the site. Nonetheless, I thought there was enough material to share!
Between the 14 or so daily flights between the cities, only one is flown in ANA’s signature The Room product. I flew long haul on the product earlier in 2024 from Chicago to Tokyo, I’ll try to push out a review too but I’m afraid there may not be sufficient material.
Without further ado, let’s get into this short but sweet flight!
My flight today was scheduled for 15:15, so I arrived at T3 around 13:00 or so. After a quick check-in I took the infamous tram over to the gates. A J ticket on ANA gave access to CA’s J lounge. A more detailed review of that can be found on my PEK-TPE CA review. Today, just a quick visit where I grabbed some beef noodles from and miscellaneous dishes from the buffet. A solid way to grab a quick bite, but I didn’t want to fill up too much before the flight.
It was a gorgeous February day in Beijing, and I couldn’t pass on doing some plane spotting.
A CA bird in the Star Alliance livery, always a treat. I’ve never seen Singapore’s Star Alliance all white livery in person, but my goodness it’s beautiful even in the pictures.
With boarding commencing, I made my way over and found my bird for the day, a (then) 13-year-old Boeing 777-300 ER. Despite having a full F class “The Suite” available, it wasn’t sold on these shorter flights. I wonder if you can snag a seat in that cabin with higher ANA status, but it still wouldn’t come with the meals and everything.
On we go
Climbing on board, I found my seat being a rear-facing one. Not a problem, just quite peculiar. The cabin was quite empty today, capacity only around 20% full.
Waiting at my seat were slippers, headphones, and a fleece blanket. I was immediately drawn to the massive IFE screen and gorgeous Japanese landscape wallpaper. A menu card was also provided, the blue on the table.
Partitions can be drawn up and down between middle seats, although most remained unoccupied today.
Standing in the aisle looking in, this remains a top tier J product in terms of size and privacy. There are, however, some flaws I noticed primarily on my ORD journey. If I even noticed those issues back then, before my true passion for flying hit its peak, then they must really have been quite significant! More on that later.
The seat offers ample storage space inside that big cabinet next to eh IFE that opens. A controller for your screen is located just under the table with seat controls to its right. IF you look closely, the headphone jack is visible near the red strap housing the life jacket.
We soon began pushing back entrapped between multiple CA birds.
We pushed out of PEK at 15:12, three minutes ahead of schedule, onto our 3 hour a 5 minute journey to Haneda. Some nice views in the clouds upon ascent.
I took some time playing with the in-flight shopping, something I recall doing on my ORD flight back in the day. All the ANA branded merch is so cute, and I grabbed this tiny tote bag for my girlfriend, and this color changing Sakura Fuji glass for myself.
I usually refrain from spending too much time duty free shopping, but ANA makes all their merch so attractive!
Meal orders were then taken, the classic option between Japanese or Western.
Apologies for not digging deeper into the entertainment options, I just went with some Friends to accompany my trip. A deeper dive into the IFE is available on my ANA flight from Chicago.
There’s a tiny bit of extra space there under the screen, but not enough to place anything significant. You can sort of see the fleece blanket here that’s in the bottom, nothing too special.
Something cool about the seat controls is the wheel-like function that reclines. Regarding the slight criticism of what’s otherwise a solid hard product stem from my ORD-HND long-haul flight. Despite the privacy and size of the suite, I found it surprisingly uncomfortable when lying fully flat. I initially thought it was just me but turns out this is a common issue. My feet essentially could not fully stretch into the footrest if I lay straight, and even perpendicularly to maximize distance left me wiggling around nonstop for space. Being 185, I understand it’s not realistic never to expect any issues lying down in the sky, but this product was by far the least comfortable J seat layflat. Luckily, not something to worry about today.
Meal service began with a beverage of choice and some packaged mixed nuts. I went with some Japanese sake the crew recommended.
My meal was then presented. I can’t for the life of me remember if this was fish or chicken, but I do remember (and even made a note in my phone) that it was very tasty. I’ve had some poor experiences choosing the Japanese option on its carriers, but today’s was one of the better meals. They also offered some salted Japanese rice crackers in the packet on the top left. Both the cold dishes were slightly bland, but that may be down to my saltier preferences. I tried dipping some of the cold dishes into the sauce from the main, and it worked quite well.
Overall, a solid meal.
Haagen Dazs ice cream was also offered.
I spent the remaining time playing a football game on my phone, and an hour or so later we began descent into Tokyo.
We were greeted with a gorgeous sunset!
Although a few passengers shared some sighs, but I had no issues with a bus gate! A shot from the tarmac (despite it being a little blurry), can’t beat it!
One final note unrelated to the flight but check out this plane model display at the airport. It’s located upstairs near the shops after exiting immigration!
