Date: 2017/03/15
Flight: JL29
DEP/Actual Push Back: 1005JST/1006JST
ARR/Actual Touch Down: 1415HKT/1406HKT
Aircraft/Registration: 777-200/JA711J
Class: Business (Restricted Fare)
Seat: JAL SKY SUITE III
Prologue
Date: 2017/03/15
Flight: JL29
DEP/Actual Push Back: 1005JST/1006JST
ARR/Actual Touch Down: 1415HKT/1406HKT
Aircraft/Registration: 777-200/JA711J
Class: Business (Restricted Fare)
Seat: JAL SKY SUITE III
Prologue
This is one of my regular, periodic flight to Hong Kong. Booking was done on JAL's website which is a pain to use. Painful because its design is that of typical Japanese-design from the 90s.
Pre-boarding
Getting a Special Meal at Check-in
Took a look at the in-flight dinning menu and decided to try the vegetarian meal again. As I'd learned from my trip to KL, one had to phone JAL for a special meal. It's a shame that their non-toll-free phone lines are only opened from 0800 till 1900. The business class check in counter wasn't busy and I was led to an available counter immediately. Once I got my boarding pass, I asked the lady for a vegetarian meal. What followed was the expected banter; that I was supposed to request the special meal at least 24 hours in advance and I countered that their phone lines are only operational between 0800 and 1900. The end result was that she got me special meals for my return flight too. She was a lot nicer about it than that lady in Narita.
The lines for security were long. Not unusual for a weekday morning. Haneda International Terminal is reaching its capacity. The check-in lady advised me to use the priority line (as I held the OneWorld Sapphire status.) Yet there was a bit of a wait.
Lounge
Seeing how long those security lines were, I was expecting the Sakura Lounge to be packed. But it wasn't as busy as I'd feared. The usual breakfast fair was on offer; scrambled eggs, sausages, hash brown, fresh salads, rice, Japanese curry. A good hot breakfast could be have.
At the Gate
Boarding was supposed to start at 0935 at gate 113. At 0934, they announced that boarding had been delayed to 0945 due to aircraft not being ready or whatnot. Boarding ended up starting from 0940. They had neglected to double-check my passport-boarding pass and let me on.
Noticed that there was a line for first class passengers though this flight didn't have a first class.
On Board
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| In-Your-Face Screen |
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| Too Much Material |
The aircraft was a retrofitted 777-200 with the latest "Sky Suite III" When I first tried it in December 2016, I found it surprisingly cramped. This time I figured out why; it's the huge fixed IFE screen and the white box behind it. It's as if a CRT screen is housed in that box. According to YouTube, similar seats on CX, and KLM have swing-out screens, doing away with that huge housing box taking up all that real estate, thus making the seat more spacious.
The seat pocket for printed materials is far too narrow for the stuff JAL provided. Even the seat pockets are inferior to those on CX, or AF.
Food
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| Delicious Appretizer |
 |
| Familiar-looking Vegetarian Maim Course |
 |
| Same Desert |
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| Vegetarian Meal |
Service
Flight attendants were more interested in pushing inflight shopping than say noticing that I needed more Perrier. I had to flag down a flight attendant on her down the aisle selling duty-free items. What's worse, they had to interrupt my movie watching to announce the start of in-flight shopping.
Epilogue
The only reason I flew JAL was that they where cheaper than CX.
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