Korean Air

SYD-ICN-LHR-ICH-SYD. Ground staff and cabin crew were very helpful and friendly. Stopover in Seoul well organised with high quality food and accommodation at the Hyatt Incheon 5 mins from the airport. We flew on 747 and 777 200 both clean modern interior and spacious although the bulky inflight shopping magazines etc limited leg room. AVOD was functional on all legs though the small selection of movies and TV shows was definitely exhausted by the end of the last leg back into SYD. Value for money I could not fault Korean Air and would certainly recommend this airline.

I will not fly with them again (have done so twice in last 6 months) until they let some daylight into the cabin! I hate the way they close all the blinds and turn off lights basically straight after takeoff - even when I boarding at 7am in Auckland they rush your food out and then slam the whole show into darkness. You spend two days in the dark when flying with them from London to Auckland/Auckland London each time. I know they think it calms the passengers and gives the cabin crew less work if we are all in the dark but I am fed up with it. Everything else was great but until they let us see some daylight when flying I will not fly with them again even if they are the best price. I am sure that being shut up in the dark for so long on their flights contributes to jet lag on arrival.

Auckland via Seoul to Fukuoka. Flight leaving Auckland was delayed by about an hour which meant we missed our connecting flight to Fukuoka. However Korean Air put us up in a 5 star hotel in Seoul with Dinner and Breakfast. 7B47-400 Auckland to Seoul was spacious but slightly old. IFE system good but had no-where near the range of Emirates. Korean Air still give all children toys for the flight and economy class passengers a small toiletry bag. Flight attendant uniform very nice. Service onboard very polite and helpful. Found cabin staff presence through-out long haul flight quite low however - but when I pressed the call button an attendant would be there happily within a minute. Seat legroom good on both legs particularly for a short flight between Korea and Japan. A330 IFE much better than the 747 IFE. Meal between Seoul and Fukuoka was great but rather ambitious for such a short flight making the cabin crew on that leg very rushed. Only bad parts of this leg where the lack of cabin presence by attendants. Incheon airport very nice although Iprefer Hong Kong over Incheon. Biggest flaw with Korean Air is the terribly poor level of English spoken. I could understand if there was a low level of English between Fukuoka and Incheon. But between Auckland and Seoul I would expect to have at least one attendant fluent in English. But they often couldn't understand what I was saying which made organising what we had to do due to our late flight on the way over difficult with the flight attendants.

ICN-IAD Economy class. Ground service at Incheon was excellent. Everything was fast and smooth and it only took 10-15 mins for me to check-in clear security and pass immigration. FA's were very friendly and had smiles all the way to Washington DC. I enjoyed the hospitality throughout the flight. Inflight entertainment was very good quality. AVOD offered recent Hollywood box office movies TV comedy programmes and numerous other entertainment. Meal was excellent. Bibimbop was delicious pizza was offered as a snack. Sufficient leg room very clean loo. Korean Air even offers an amenity pack for Economy Class passengers.

SYD-ICH-LON (return). Cabin crew food inflight entertainment overall service and experience all of a very high standard. In addition it was a child-friendly service. The SYD-ICH-LON leg comes with a stopover in Seoul as part of the ticket price. This was great (even if the queuing at Icheon Seoul airport was a bit onerous) and we arrived in London very refreshed. The return LON-ICH-SYD was hard work. Both legs are overnight flights with a 5hr wait at Icheon airport. It could be worth a stopover - particularly if travelling with a child. Overall based on my experience I would definitely recommend Korean Air.

ICN-PVG roundtrip in Y. Newly refurbished A330 is great. Big LCD touch screen wide and comfortable seats and great pitch. The plane is as good as new. Flight attendants were well groomed with fancy uniform. However they were more interested in grooming and selling duty free items than actually serving passengers. Meals were mediocre at best they were rushed to the passengers followed by quick collection to open up for the duty free sales. Great hardware but no human touch.

I took Korea Air new aircraft airbus-380 flight between Tokyo (Narita)-Seoul (Incheon) last month. It was really smooth flight and even in Economy Class the seat is very conformable. Airbus is very quiet and smooth on route. Flight Attendant are all friendly and polite but they seem to be a bit nervous for new aircraft. As for Japanese citizen often fly to Korea I am always impressed by both mega carriers of Korea Korean Air and Asiana for their good services and conformable aircraft compare to JAL and ANA. The quality of services on Korean Air and Asiana are getting better year by year instead JAL and ANA are getting bad. However inflight meal of Korean air is not preferable for the short leg flights.

SGN-ICN-IAD: immaculate 777s on both legs. Lots of leg room and recline good AVOD. Ground staff in SGN was excellent with an easy transfer through ICN. Lots of leg room and recline. FAs were professional & helpful. They were also stylishly turned out which matters. I do miss the Korean entrees that this excellent airline used to offer.

LAX-ICN-KUL. One of the bad parts of the trip was a 13 hour layover in Seoul but Korean put us in a hotel for free - we could have opted for a free four hour tour of Seoul. All staff very polite and friendly inflight entertainment system was great. Staff brought drinks around about every 45 minutes. We were on an older B747 towards the back but it was two seats instead of three so gave us a lot of space to put everything. One nice thing they handed out slippers!

Extremely disappointing customer service. Beware of buying sleeper seats - they have often switched planes on me last minute without notice and don't make up the difference between the sleeper seat and regular business class seats. My experiences with the Korean Air representatives is that they are extremely rude and unprofessional. I fly to Korea often but find that Asiana Airlines is a much better choice.