Asiana Airlines – Sydney to Seoul

It was a little bit of a tight connection having been about 30 minutes late into Sydney but I managed it ok as this Asiana 777 was late in from Seoul. So far so good – having just cleared Papua New Guinea we’re probably about half way there. I’m going to do my best to stick to NZ time en route, which means I am staying awake with a couple of beers, plenty of water, ploughing through some newspapers (so far read 1 NZ, 1 Oz and 2 Korean papers) and magazines, and some movies. Baby-mama was surprisingly good and I think I’ve developed a bit of a crush on Tina Fey, and that’s not even counting her Sarah Palin impersonation. The Forbidden Kingsom with Jet Li and Jackie Chan was a mindless updated Karate Kid which was easy on the eye and my slightly Korean beer-addled brain.

The service on Asiana is good, but the selection of fayre is a bit limited compared with the likes of Singapore and Air NZ long-haul products in economy class. Or even Lufthansa actually. I was pretty lucky in that my trip to the UK, Japan and India in February and March this year was in Business class, so my comparisions might be a little offside. But I think it’s fair to say that the service on Asiana is very good, but not best in class by a long chalk. Still, the flight is probably only 60-70% full, so there is plenty of room to spread out, even if the Star Alliance Gold seat blocking I was assured of didn’t work out. I’ll be keen to see if things are stepped up a notch atIncheon tomorrow – it’s often the case that airlines flying out of their home hub tend to step it up a little.

I’m looking forward to getting to my hotel and getting out for a little walk in Seoul tonight and perhaps even getting to go for a spa if there is plae close by. Asiana are laying on a tarnsfer, a hotel nearthe centre of the city and breakfast and dinner vouchers as part of the deal. The other side of the deal is that my flight tomorrow doesn’t take off until 1.30pm. So, it’ll takeme a while longer to get to London, but I’ll get a good night’s sleep on the way. That suits me just fine on this trip.