Korean Air

We’ve taken 4 long haul economy flights in the past month with Korean Air, thoughts:

Pros: Plenty of seat pitch (33 to 34 inches) so never cramped, punctual (3 of the 4 flights were on time or early, 4th was 35 mins late), good & polite & efficient cabin crew, one of our legs included one night free accommodation at Grand Hyatt Incheon (with dinner, breakfast, airport transfers all included), cost of the airfares was very competitive, the skypass points earned mostly covered entry to Prestige lounge at Incheon airport in both directions, generous carry on weight limit (12 kgs), they’re a full service carrier (no hidden costs), and they have modern clean aircraft, with a good safety record.

Cons: The inflight entertainment had enough good content for 2.5 long haul flights (up to ~30 hours), but beyond that there wasn’t much (really needs some old classics or extra English-language content), so I just slept. Also the 12 hour daytime long-haul flights had 2 meal services (breakfast and dinner), but no lunch – they did offer snacks, including sometimes yummy warm pizza, so I just kept going back for snacks until satiated.

Pros vastly outweigh cons, very good overall.

Delta partnered with Korean which I quit years ago. Things are even worse. Seats are barely padded and very cramped on long flights.

But it’s how extremely RUDE staff at Seoul ICN airport that shocked me. Korean Air should be ashamed.

Delta should go back to ANA and let us transit in Narita or something and I’ll go back to Delta.

I lost my wallet right before boarding just outside the boarding gate but only realized towards the end of the flight. Upon leaving the aircraft, I sought help from crew staff. They were quick to refer me to the airport website and the airline website before ushering me off. Later confirmed that the airport was in possession of my wallet but needed some assistance or advice retrieving it. I called their customer service hotline which was received by an agent from the ticketing office in Malaysia, who told me that there was nothing they would do. The agent didn’t have the knowledge or capacity to be of any assistance, but refused to let me speak to other staff in the airline who might have more of a clue. The overwhelming impression is that their staff are only willing to do the bare minimum. The airline is fine for getting from point A to B, but do not expect their staff to be of any help if you need it.
Also, customer support seems to ignores emails or are extremely slow at replying.

Flew Business (Prestige) class Sydney to Amsterdam via Incheon with return Rome to Sydney. A 7 hour layover in Incheon unpleasant as 2 lounges both overcrowded, with limited and poor quality food options. Getting a shower was almost impossible as no-one could be found to arrange a cubicle for a long time. Needed to return to Sydney early due to family illness at home. They refused to alter our tickets to an earlier date without adding 3,000 per ticket x 3 as we’d bought them cheap at 5500 each, or about 16,500. No empathy or consideration given to our plight so never again will we fly them to Europe.

It was an international travel from Fukuoka (Japan) to Delhi (India) via Seoul (South Korea) by Korean Air. Due to the bad weather condition, the airline was kept on postponing the estimated time of departure in Fukuoka (Japan) Airport. The flight from Fukuoka to Seoul was 5:30 hours delayed approximately. During that time the staff at Fukuoka airport provided a can of coffee and nothing else. Anyway, I was worried since I needed to board another Korean Air flight from Seoul to Delhi. Unfortunately, I couldn’t board that flight. I contacted airlines staff and the staff suggested me to take the next day flight from Seoul to Delhi. The staff happily showed incapability to provide any lounge/hotel for one night stay as well. I was supposed to reach Seoul in afternoon but landed in the late evening. I was completely exhausted and hungry also knowing that I needed to spend one night and a day until afternoon (15 hours approximately) before boarding the flight to Delhi. Now, the flight to Delhi was kept on postponing. During this time period, I contacted airport inquiry and tired to contact airline staff but couldn’t find the airline staff in various attempts. Not to mention that airlines didn’t provide any food since they didn’t bother to contact me at all. Note that the flight which was supposed to take off afternoon was finally rescheduled to 20:00 hours approximately which made my stay at Incheon Airport (Seoul) 24 hours approximately. It was indeed a pathetic experience and I was left with no energy. The airline should treat the passenger properly and also provide accommodation if flights are rescheduled. I would definitely not recommended Korean Airlines to anyone.