International Law

A Decent Economy Class Experience on Korean Air?Go Figure

On this latest trip to San Francisco, since I?m working against my own marketing-expense budget, I booked economy class and used accrued frequent-flyer mileage (30,000) to upgrade to business (on Korean Air, ?Prestige Class?) for the SEL-SFO leg. Coming back today, I flew economy because it?s ?high season? in the States and they wanted 45,000 miles for the upgrade. I?ve got a lot of miles accrued, but that?s rich for my blood.

Anyway, as it turns out my experience in economy class was surprisingly better. The airframe for both legs of the flight was the Boeing 777-200. The seats in business are excellent, allowing full recline for sleep. Ordinarily I need the legroom, and find economy to be way too cramped—especially given that Koreans generally are not that tall. Take a knee-knocking ride on a Korean inter-city bus sometime and see what I mean.

On the Korean Air 777-200, they?ve adopted a seat pitch that leaves enough legroom for a 6? 1? American male like me. Each seat has its own video screen in the seat-back, and—and—a power port for laptop power adapters as well as an Ethernet port. (Sedgwick, if you read this, you?re right—I wasted W50,000 on that MacBook airline power adapter.) Internet service was not active on my flight, but the existence of the Ethernet port points to a future welcome development. (Will Internet be free on KAL? Korea is the ?world?s most wired? country, after all.)

The business class flight from Seoul to San Francisco last week was made miserable by the fact that I was seated next to a gassy Korean businessman whose ceaseless farts were eye-wateringly foul. Twelve hours turned away from that dude with my palm cupped over my nose and I was in no shape for my meetings. He also took his shoes off, and those socks were no treat either.

Full post as published by Korea Law Blog on June 02, 2008 (boomark / email).