Good recommended airline carrier overall (Korean Air)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Korean Air
Date:	14/05/09 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice modern aircraft

Disadvantages: Food gets a bit samey on long haul flights

We flew by Korean Air from London Heathrow to Auckland, New Zealand and back last October / November as at the time they were offering the cheapest tickets for this route(!) We changed planes at stopovers in Seoul Incheon aiport between flights for a approx 4 hours going, and an overnight stay on the way back.

I was favourably impressed with this carrier. The plane to Seoul (London - Seoul going, and Seoul - London returning) was....one of the larger kinds of aircraft, and it had those individual TV screens for each person on the back of the seat in front. You could select from a range of recently released films on DVD, there were also family classics / 'oldies' and a couple of kids' choices on offer, which was great, given that it was such a long flight - this really made the time pass more quickly. The onward flight to and from NZ wasn't on such a big plane, and you had the standard communal film screen at the front of the plane showing just a few recent-DVD-released films - some made in Korea, which is fair enough (though the subtitles were nigh impossible to see given the plane's set up and their location on the screen).

I'm afraid the airline food did become a bit of a problem. You got breakfast, lunch and dinner at intervals throughout the flight, and there were usually two options - a western-style meal and a Korean choice. The Korean choice - I think at every meal - was invariably a dish called Bimbimbap. With slight variations in the type of pickled vegetable, it was always the same. Don't get me wrong - personally I enjoy Korean food, and when I lived in a place where there were Korean restaurants locally I quite often visited them, and regularly ordered Bimbimbap. On the plane this consists of a bowl of glutinous (sushi-style) rice served with various pickled or stir fried vegetables, possibly egg, sweetish braised / stir-fried tender beef or other meat, which you mix all together with soy and hot Korean chilli sauce. You also get a bowl of instant seaweed soup to wash it down - delicately flavoured, but rather nice.

The Korean Air Bimbimbap was certainly above average for airline food. But from reading other reviews, I can see why it wouldn't be to everyone's taste if you're not keen on this type of dish - that said, initially I thought it was pretty good. But having it served so often - and on one of the return flights, they ran out of the alternative option, so all there was available, meal after meal after meal, was bleedin' Bimbimbap, and eating that when there was nothing else on offer soon became something of a trial. (This has really stuck in my mind as a defining feature of our holiday and despite having liked Bimbimbap before, I simply can't face the stuff any more, not even now, more than six months later.) So the take-home message here is, you should take lots of alternative food options with you if you're flying any distance with these guys, and definitely if you have fussy kids. I think ours barely ate anything for the entire plane trip. (Though of course, if you're going to New Zealand, you have to eat any fresh fruit, meat or dairy products - e.g. cheese and ham sandwiches - before you get to the airport so be prepared to ditch anything you've brought too much of before the end of the flight.)

Other good points were the helpfulness of the airline attendants during the flights - also the little gifts (a 'cudddly' plane quivering keyring) they gave to young kids were a nice touch (with four flights we have a load of them all the same now, of course!) It was a pity that they asked passengers to keep the windows shut throughout the flight, even during the daylight legs, because I quite like - in fact one of my favourite parts of flying is - looking down at the landscapes below when I'm on a plane - but this just seems to be a policy of this airline. The loos were kept nice and clean (somehow) during the flight, which was also a great added bonus. The legroom and comfortableness of the seats after 14 odd hours sititing still wasn't great - but much the same as on other airlines I think.

We did have a problem on our return leg, which should've incorporated an overnight stay in an airport hotel in Seoul as part of the ticket. Our travel agent (Travelbag, who've now refunded the airport transit hotel room that we had to pay on the spot) loused this up and didn't make the booking, but the Korean air staff at Auckland airport were absoultely no use whatsoever when we were trying to determine whether our room had actually been reserved / booked ahead of time ("you'll just have to turn up and see what they say when you get there"). They also refused to ring ahead to Seoul to check on our behalf, and said they didn't know and couldn't tell us if there were available airport hotels nearby, which made for a pretty worrying first leg of the trip, especially as we were travelling with a three year old, and were due to arrive in Seoul pretty late in the evening. Admittedly, not booking the hotel was our travel agent's mistake, but with a few clicks on the internet the Auckland staff from Korean Air could have helped us find out about hotels in Seoul in about two minutes flat - even to confirm there were a few choices fairly near the airport would've been a great help - but just wouldn't do it, even though they could see quite clearly exactly how upset and distressed we were at the situation (blimey, but they were a useless bunch of stony-faced gits). I see from other reviews that unhelpful / austere staff is a previously-registered complaint for this airline; I'm afraid that this one experience with them in Auckland also bore this out.

Overall however, now knowing a few of the obvious pitfalls to look out for, I'd certainly consider flying with these guys again.

Summary: You'll have a good trip as long as you don't expect any extra customer care from the staff