PaulST
Established Member
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2014
- Posts
- 1,194
I suppose all good things must come to an end and my journey around Europe, Qatar and Russia ended last Sunday when I landed in Sydney after a red-eye flight with JAL from NRT in one of their 77Ws in J class.
I arrived at the airport 12hrs earlier and given the heat/humidity in Tokyo, as well as the fact that I’ve visited before, I decided to stay at the airport. I’m OWE so I had access to the JAL Flounge and spent most of my time there although I also had a look at the Sakura J lounge as well as the CX and QF J lounges (but was unable to find the AA Admirals Club). The JAL Flounge is pretty good and was fairly quiet on the Saturday I was there. The free massage was OK and I spent a fair while in the mechanical massage chairs although unfortunately the controls are all in Japanese so I didn’t really know what I was doing. There were a few chairs and none of them were being used so I didn’t have to worry about hogging them, too, so I could relax.
Anyway, boarding all took place with reasonable efficiency with premium pax boarding first. It was a relief as the boarding gate was quite loud since, it seemed, a large portion of the pax were school kids off to visit Australia.
My seat was 7K which is in a mini J cabin right behind the F cabin. I quite like JALs Sky Suite setup and find that they offer decent privacy as well as direct aisle access and window views. Sadly my flight was at night so most of the view was black… Larger people may struggle to fit through the gap between the panels to get into the seat but I found that the front row of seats actually has a larger gap than the other seats. It’s somewhat similar to new BA CW design, except that all of the seats are forward facing which IMO is a far better design as you don’t want to be staring into a strangers face (until you’re allowed to raise the barrier). Having said that, you wouldn’t want to be staring into the face of your travel partner even if you did know them! I quite like the amount of padding on the seats too, as I have fairly little padding on my hips so lying on my side often results in some discomfort after a few hours on a hard mattress. This wasn’t an issue on the sky suite’s beds, even without an additional mattress.
The food and drink were fine. As I said in the video, I wanted to get some sleep so I didn’t have dessert or breakfast. I really do like the traditional Japanese meals!
The IFE screen is pretty big and the quality is good, although the content was really lacking. I didn’t find a single TV show I wanted to watch but there were a few movies.
The FAs were fine although, again, struggled with my Aussie accent so communication was sadly kept to a minimum. I’ve really enjoyed the friendly chatting on my recent QF, BA and QR flights so that was a bit disappointing.
Ah… that’s about all I can think of. Over-all it was a pleasant flight. Next time I plan to try CX (hopefully an A350) to Europe and will be keen to try them on proper long-haul flights (I’ve only done regional J with them).
[video=youtube_share;OYq7i14jCVA]https://youtu.be/OYq7i14jCVA[/video]
I arrived at the airport 12hrs earlier and given the heat/humidity in Tokyo, as well as the fact that I’ve visited before, I decided to stay at the airport. I’m OWE so I had access to the JAL Flounge and spent most of my time there although I also had a look at the Sakura J lounge as well as the CX and QF J lounges (but was unable to find the AA Admirals Club). The JAL Flounge is pretty good and was fairly quiet on the Saturday I was there. The free massage was OK and I spent a fair while in the mechanical massage chairs although unfortunately the controls are all in Japanese so I didn’t really know what I was doing. There were a few chairs and none of them were being used so I didn’t have to worry about hogging them, too, so I could relax.
Anyway, boarding all took place with reasonable efficiency with premium pax boarding first. It was a relief as the boarding gate was quite loud since, it seemed, a large portion of the pax were school kids off to visit Australia.
My seat was 7K which is in a mini J cabin right behind the F cabin. I quite like JALs Sky Suite setup and find that they offer decent privacy as well as direct aisle access and window views. Sadly my flight was at night so most of the view was black… Larger people may struggle to fit through the gap between the panels to get into the seat but I found that the front row of seats actually has a larger gap than the other seats. It’s somewhat similar to new BA CW design, except that all of the seats are forward facing which IMO is a far better design as you don’t want to be staring into a strangers face (until you’re allowed to raise the barrier). Having said that, you wouldn’t want to be staring into the face of your travel partner even if you did know them! I quite like the amount of padding on the seats too, as I have fairly little padding on my hips so lying on my side often results in some discomfort after a few hours on a hard mattress. This wasn’t an issue on the sky suite’s beds, even without an additional mattress.
The food and drink were fine. As I said in the video, I wanted to get some sleep so I didn’t have dessert or breakfast. I really do like the traditional Japanese meals!
The IFE screen is pretty big and the quality is good, although the content was really lacking. I didn’t find a single TV show I wanted to watch but there were a few movies.
The FAs were fine although, again, struggled with my Aussie accent so communication was sadly kept to a minimum. I’ve really enjoyed the friendly chatting on my recent QF, BA and QR flights so that was a bit disappointing.
Ah… that’s about all I can think of. Over-all it was a pleasant flight. Next time I plan to try CX (hopefully an A350) to Europe and will be keen to try them on proper long-haul flights (I’ve only done regional J with them).
[video=youtube_share;OYq7i14jCVA]https://youtu.be/OYq7i14jCVA[/video]
