Korean Air sucks

I've always been of the mindset that Asian carriers are superior to domestic ones when flying to Asia. This has always been the case for me. I've flown Northwest, Singapore and JAL to Tokyo and Malaysia to Taipei in the past, and Singapore, Malaysia and JAL had similar levels of service and amenities on the plane.

By amenities and service I mean some simple things: beer and a TV in the seat back in front of me. The TV must have multiple current movies for free and on-demand. Singapore, Malaysia and JAL all have that. So i've always championed the Asian carriers.

On this trip, it was, if I had to guess, $40 cheaper to fly Korean than Singapore. My friend have flown Korean in the past and gave it good marks, even after I told them about the awesomeness of Singapore. So I buy Korean. I'm batting 1000 on Asian carriers at this point afterall.

It starts at check in. I make sure Matt and I get there stupidly early. We're about tenth in line. Get up to the front and the guy checks us in to the center group, an aisle and a nothing seat. I ask for an exit row, which he says he can't get us. Strikes 1 and 2. Dude should see that i'm one of the top ten tallest people getting on that damn plane and give it to me straight up. At least offer it. But no, this pillar of light sticks us in the center of the plane. I ask if we can get a window (Matt likes windows, even on transpacific flights), so he punches in some stuff and we get one. I then find out that the seating is 2-5-2, which makes the fact that he checked two dudes into the 5 across area when he could have stuck us in our own little private area straight up, well fucking strike 3.

I'd knock them down a point for not flying us over on a 747, but I suppose word's already gotten out that their seat assigning sucks and they don't have enough asses in seats to justify the big-boy plane.

Truth be told, all this is forgivable. Could have just gotten the wrong guy to check us in, and the way the 777 is laid out, there aren't many actual exit rows, if any (though a front row, of which there are plenty, would have sufficed). All this is fine so long as you've got your plentiful beer and a sweet selection of movies in your personal TV.

No TV's. It's like I am flying Northwest. That is straight up not forgivable in this day and age. Strike fucking 4. No TV. 12 hours in a fucking seat and no TV. On some flights they have them, cos the fucking magazine showed me what I could be watching, but none on my flight. Just two movies on some shitty projection TVs and a couple of tiny monitors to strain your eyes on. It's 1985 again.

Then there's the beer. Now, back in the day, first time I flew Singapore, I was downright shocked at two things. The first was that they up front asked me if I'd like a beer, and made pretty much sure that I had one for the whole flight. It was probably only six beers, but they were so forthcoming with it that I fell in love, not with the notoriously attractive Singapore flight attendants, but with the fact that they kept giving me beer. BEER! On American flights I'd have had to pay five bucks for that.

JAL and Malaysia were similar in the forthcomingness of beer. Korean gave me A beer. they came around a few more times with juice pre-poured in glasses, but I think the drink cart only made the rounds once. ONCE! A Jet Blue flight that's less than an hour gets the drinks out that much! Just insanity. So needless to say the flight sucked.

The flight back sucked more, because I slept through my one beer opportunity, and then we hit some turbulence which maintained off and on for most of the flight. That would be okay cos I understand Korean Air has no control over the weather. But they do have control over the cabin lights which they would exercise arbitrarily as we hit rough spots. Other than causing excessive panic, I don't see the logic of kicking on the lights after a good bump.

So yeah, Korean sucks. And to add insult to injury, as we walked out of the plane in LA, all the TVs were advertising the little TVs and on-demand movies that they have in their seats.

Next time, I'm spending the extra cash and flying Singapore.