Review: Japan Airlines First Class Chicago - Tokyo Narita
By Alex Reed|June 18, 2016
Japan Airlines Flight 9 - Chicago O'Hare (ORD) to Tokyo Narita (NRT)
Boeing 777-300ER, First Class, Seat 2A
Four out of the five in-flight reviews I have posted in the "Asian Airlines" section of this site are for Japan Airlines (JL), so I wouldn't be surprised if you thought I only flew on JL. Even with the addition of this first class review (the others are reviews of business or economy class), please don't think that it's the only airline that I have experience with in Asia! Yes, I've spent a lot of time on JL in the past few years but I have flown on quite a few other airlines. In the coming months we should have a total of 13 more trip reports that cover seven other Asia-based airlines. I am slowly but steadily getting to all of these posts, I promise.
But for now .... JL First class!
American Airlines recently went through a rather painful devaluation to their award chart, but this trip was planned back in the "good ole days" when first class award tickets were relatively inexpensive. My partner was graduating from the University of Chicago with his MBA and I wanted to celebrate with a big trip. After a bit of back and forth on potential destinations, he decided on a three stop trip to Southeast Asia - Siem Reap in Cambodia for a jaunt through Angkor Wat, a few days in Vientiane in Laos for an exploration along the Mekong, and ending everything with the tropical paradise of Bali in Indonesia. With the destinations selected, I went about securing our flight and hotels. Our first leg - JL's first class out of ORD into NRT.
Back a few years ago, JL operated out of Terminal 5 at ORD, which is where most international carriers depart. With such large operations at ORD, both American and United have had partner airline within their alliances move some of their departures over to their respective terminal space. JL was one of the carriers (along with AirBerlin and Iberia, Qatar launched service from AA's terminal but moved to T5 after a few months) that moved their flights to AA's T3.
A few hours before the flight JL takes up a few desks from AA's normal operating space. Some of the folks working the check-in desk are Americans without bilingual abilities but there are a few Japanese-speaking staff as well.
Check-in was fairly smooth except for the agent having some concerns about our lack of an outbound flight. Due to our three country itinerary I ended up booking our flights as two one way reservations, so she only saw us arriving into Kuala Lumpur on a one way ticket. Once we produced our itineraries showing that we were leaving within the visa period for Americans in Malaysia, we were issued our tickets and our luggage was checked in without any further delay.
For our cabin baggage, the agent pulled out tags that she tied to each bag that noted we were first class passengers and even wrote our seat numbers by hand on each one. I've flown in JL's economy and business cabin multiple times and never had my cabin baggage tagged, so I think this is unique for first class.
Once we had our luggage tagged the agent walked out from behind the desk and escorted us through the security line. American has a Flagship Check-In facility (which the airline was nice enough to invite me to visit when they opened - LINK) but JL's passengers are not able to access it, hence the escort. We were brought to the expedited security line and moved through in less than five minutes. Once we were on the other side the agent asked if we knew where the lounge was located and when I affirmed that I did, she bid us a good flight and let us know she would see us at the gate.
JL uses AA's lounges for passengers on their flights at ORD - the Admirals Club for business and the Flagship for first class. We hustled our way down to the Flagship lounge, which was convenient as the JL flight departs from the gate next door. American's Flagship lounge is a nice place to relax but overall pretty underwhelming as a first class lounge when compared to the offerings of other airlines across the globe. Which is why I'm not going to elaborate on our time there - it was all rather blasé.
Since the Flagship and Admirals function as official lounge spaces for JL (not just elite status access), the staff do make announcements for the JL flight and we were notified that boarding was starting for our trip to Tokyo. We gathered up our bags, with first class tags dangling, and made our way to the gate.
The tags seemed to work some magic as JL staff identified us almost immediately and escorted us over to the side of the boarding lanes where we joined a few Japanese business men in suits waiting to board. After a short few minutes of waiting the agents started scanning our boarding passes and sending us down the jet bridge toward the plane. At the door we were greeted by two flight attendants at the door, one of which was the customer service manager. They bowed as we approached and upon taking our boarding passes in hand escorted my partner and I to our seats - 2A & 2D. 2A was my seat, against the window. 2D was Zach's seat, an interior seat with aisle access.
JL's first class cabin is only two rows of four seats each. Seat assignments can be made online, though JL does block seats 1A & 1K for passenger who have paid for their ticket with cash. If no one has selected those seats by check-in time, the agents can assign you to those seats, no problem.
JL's first class is open suites, meaning that there is a shell around the seat but it does not come with the ability to close a door and enclose itself like some products on other carriers such as Singapore Airlines, Etihad, or JL's rival and main competitor - All Nippon Airways. Despite not being quite as private and enclosed, I really like JL's first class seat. The shells are a light beige while the seats themselves are a dark chocolate brown leather. The table and storage spaces along the seat were a reddish faux wood.
The seat itself is quite comfortable and wide. A full-size memory foam pillow was already placed on it. Like many first class seats, a separate foot rest was attached to the seat's shell with its own seat belt as it doubled as a seat for a dining companion. If you hit turbulence, your dining companion simply straps the seat belt on and you continue dining like happy clams, safe and snug.
I looked over at Zach and saw that he was settling into his seat quite happily. He doesn't get to travel as often as I do and when he does it's only in economy class, so this first class adventure was going to be a nice trip for him. His only other premium cabin experience prior to this was flying with me from ORD to Delhi, India on American's angled lie-flat business class.
Leg room is clearly not an issue in these seats. Even if you're well over 6 feet tall you have ample room to stretch out. The seat itself is fully mobile, with two separate control panels to adjust the seat's features. On one panel you can press buttons to convert the seat into pre-selected positions labeled upright (landing), relax (lounging), and bed (fully flat).
The second panel featured a diagram of the seat with directional buttons allowing you to adjust the seat to your own personal preference, just in case the pre-set options were not to your liking.
Pretty much the entire side panel between the seat and the window/wall was designated as storage space, either for your personal items or for controllers for the in-flight entertainment (IFE). Within hand's reach was a small compartment with a touchscreen controller and a little bit of space available to store something small. Closer to the shoulder area was a larger compartment for storage with another controller inside. It was much deeper than the other compartment, containing netting to keep looser items from shifting about.
Next to the television screen was another small storage area. A small button on the front of the raised section popped open a drawer by the table. Next to the compartment was a small storage area which had a plastic wrapped pair of slippers placed inside of it.
On the left hand side of the seat's shell was a small reading light with a Bose headset hanging from it. This was a nice touch as many airlines offer headsets to premium cabin passengers but most are not as high quality as Bose. On the right hand side of the seat's shell was another reading light. Both lights were strength-controlled so that you could intensify or lessen the amount of illumination provided.
Overall, I'm a big fan of JL's first class seat. As I mentioned before, even though it's not fully enclosed the seat itself is quite spacious and comfortable. It does a really great job of making storage space available to the passenger, which is something I think is overlooked in some seats. Sure, there's storage space on other carriers, but it isn't really placed in convenient and thoughtful ways. The color scheme of chocolate leather, bright wood, and red carpet works well and has a certain hint of regalness. The seat itself is more than comfortable with nice padding and contouring.
Having taken full stock of our seats and settled in a bit, a flight attendant approached us to offer us our choice of pre-departure beverage. Glasses of champagne, water, and orange juice were offered to us on a tray. Zach selected the champagne and being a non-drinker I went with the orange juice.
As we sipped on our drinks the cabin began to fill up with passengers and it appeared we'd have a full house in first class on our flight to NRT today - the two of us and six Japanese business men. FAs flitted about the cabin with smiles on their faces helping to put away suit coats. As we had no suit coats the FAs brought us some blankets.
Another FA swung by as we were settling the blankets into storage and offered us our choice of pajamas for the flight. JL's first class offering includes soft, cotton pants and shirts for passengers. The pants include pockets and the shirts have a zipper on the collar that allows you to open it to the top of your chest, which can come in handy as JL (and most other Asian airlines) keep cabin temperatures higher than on US carriers. JL's iconic tsurumaru logo sits on the left breast.
Soon enough we were fully loaded and the doors were closed. A full boat as noted before in first class, and from what I could tell it was a similar situation in business and economy class. As we taxied out to our runway the FAs made their way up and down the aisles collecting glasses and answering questions from the businessmen, whom seemed to be quite needy compared to Zach and I.
Unlike some other major US airports, ORD rarely has much of a wait for take off and that day was no exception. We took off heading west and north, aiming toward Alaska before we'd arch down over Russia's Asian frontier and into Japan. The journey would take us over 12 hours though, so let's head back to the service inside the plane.
As is my standard after take off, I started to play around with the seat and entertainment features. The table for the seat isn't hidden away like many other seats, it hovers above the foot rest area. As you can see in the above picture, the table is movable by releasing a grip on the front right side. It runs on a track along the length of the seat, so the passenger can move the table to their preferred distance. Unlike many other seats which have fixed locations and distances from the passenger, this table is flexible and adjustable. The trade off is that the table does float out in the open when not in use, however, it's quite far from you when seated and the space between the foot rest and the table is quite large so I actually didn't find this to be a "downside" at all.
JL provides quite a bit of handheld reading material for passengers. From left to right in the picture above - JAL Shop (duty free shopping), Skyward (JL's in-flight magazine), JAL Mooove (in-flight entertainment guide), Safety guide, JL's in-flight wifi guide, and an air sickness bag.
Once we reached cruising altitude, the FAs came by to drop off an oshibori - a hot towel. While many airlines offer hot towels prior to meal service, the Japanese traditionally receive hot towels at restaurants before meals and thus have a name for the offering.
The FAs also dropped off the menus for today's flight, which I will now post in photos below. Let's start with the beverage list:
Wonderfully detailed menu that was largely wasted on me because I'm a non-drinker. The last two pages were all I needed. Actually, I really didn't even need that because any time I'm on JL I'm pretty much only drinking one of two things - JL's original yuzu juice beverage (Sky Time) or if I'm lucky enough to be in first class, I'm drinking Royal Blue Tea's "Queen of Blue".
Queen of Blue is a unique tea that's created in small batches from hand-picked leaves only harvested in the summer. While it's not as expensive as the Salon champagne on offer, the tea is served from fancy enough to be bottled and served in wine glasses. It retails for about $40 USD per bottle at the lowest level of quality. As a fan of tea, I can tell you I'm a believer in this product. I could do without the wine bottle and fancy pouring but the flavor is definitely one I enjoy. I've tried to purchase it online but the only point of sale I can find for it only ships inside Japan.
Sky Time is JL's signature yuzu-flavored juice. Yuzu is a citrus fruit popular in East Asia. It's light, freshing, and in typical Japanese fashion the juice is not overloaded with sugar. It's my go-to drink when I'm not in first class on JL.
I decided to start my meal with a glass of Sky Time, which the FA brought to me along with a small plate of hors d'oeuvres. The plate consisted of puff pastry with cream cheese and chive, stuffed endive, marinated olive and tomato, and a slice of grilled eggplant with a cherry tomato. A good start to the meal!
Now to select my meal. JL has a set menu for the first meal on a long haul flight but after that all meal service in business and first class is a la carte. This means that after your first meal, anything else you want to eat you simply request off the menu throughout the flight. In business class, you can order food through the in-flight entertainment system. In first class, the FAs make themselves available quite readily so you simply stop one in the aisle and let them know what you'd like. I actually like this service style as it allows you to dine at your leisure and skip a meal easily if you want to sleep at the end of the flight.
The main meal came in two tracks - Japanese or Western. While the western menu looked appetizing, on a Japanese airline the Japanese meal is where it's at. Bring me the kaiseki!
For the unfamiliar, a kaiseki meal is a traditional Japanese multi-course dining experience that utilizes very traditional cooking techniques. Generally it's quite beautifully presented with a heavy focus on seasonal foods.
After placing my order the FA stopped by with a few more plates of appetizers. Some Japanese crackers (senbei) as well as a colorful dish with three small bites of vinegared seafood and mushrooms. These were a nice transition from the previous appetizer, directing the palette away from the US and toward Japan.
The first course was the zatsuki, a small dish with shrimp, scallop, and yam with a miso sauce.
Kaiseki meals feature many small dishes, so almost everything you get is nothing more than one or two bites at most. Which is fine, because it's beautifully presented and sublimely flavored.
I finally polished off my glass of Sky Time and noticed that even the tiny glasses for non-alcoholic beverages and water are etched with JL's name. I switched my drink over to the Queen of Blue tea, a much better fit to the complex, high-brow meal coming my way.
Now it was time for a few more dishes from the FA - the kobachi, tsubo, shiizakana, and mukouzuke portions listed on the menu. They were served together as they were packed together in a beautiful lacquered box with a sheet of gold and green paper wrapped around it all tied off with a golden string. Placed on a black tray with a pair of chopsticks on a stone holder and a small dish of soy sauce, it struck a memorable pose.
It was a bit of a process removing the string and the paper, but that just helped the anticipation build! Once unbound the box unfolded into two trays of food.
From left to right on the top box: simmered spring vegetables, soybean milk tofu with sea urchin & soy sauce, and simmered beef with potato sauce. From left to right on the bottom box: wakame seaweed with young sardines and grated radish, squid sushi with mashed potato, a duck roll with welsh onion, and simmered Greenland halibut, and finally a white meat fish served sashimi-style.
The small size of the dishes start to make sense when you realize just how many you're going to get. I happily picked around at the offering for a good 10-15 minutes. Quite a few amazingly nuanced flavors going on in this little wooden box, while there were admittedly a few duds in my opinion. Everything can't be a winner with so many choices! Stand outs for me included the soybean milk tofu and the duck roll.
The FA noticed I had stopped picking at my offerings and asked if she might take the tray away and bring out the next selection of offerings. It was hard to believe there was still more to come but I wasn't full just yet. Bring on the food!
A few minutes later I was presented with the dainomono, hanmono, and soup courses. While much of the kaiseki meal consists of small plates, the dainomono course serves almost like an entree - a slightly more substantial portion than the other dishes.
The dainomono was a miso-grilled filet of sablefish and grilled beef filets. Both were quite tender and flavorful. The slices of mushroom were a nice addition. The soup was a bit mild, though I wouldn't go so far as to say bland. The shrimp "mousse" added a nice bit of texture and ended up being what I felt made the dish worthwhile. Rice was offered in two varieties - plain or steamed with chicken and burdock root. I'm an old school Japanese guy so it's always plain rice for me with just about everything. Even my Panda Express orders which I deny ever making. Forget I even mentioned it.
For dessert I skipped the wagashi course of the kaiseki meal and instead asked for the offering from the western menu, an orange curacao cake. It was dusted with coffee powder and accentuated with vanilla ice cream, strawberry sauce, and fresh strawberries. A great end to an excellent meal!
The friendly FAs cleared my dishes and asked me if I wanted any hot tea or coffee. I'm generally a tea kind of guy but for some reason coffee sounded excellent. It's served in a cute cup with a high handle. I love that they serve the cream and sugar on the side instead of adding it for you.
With the meal service over, the FAs made their way up and down the aisles handing out bottles of water and the amenity kits. Normally amenity kits are passed out to passengers prior to take off, but not so in JL's first class. First class amenities for men included a cloth bag stuffed with goodies from Spanish luxury brand Loewe, a case of men's cosmetic products from Japanese brand Shiseido, and a cotton Japan Airlines branded handkerchief that was made in the tsunami-impacted Tohoku region as a way to bring investment and industry back to the area.
The Shiseido kit included a revitalizing lotion, a hydration lotion (which was more of a liquid), and a cleansing foam.
The Loewe bag itself was really nice and actually would make for a nice catch-all bag when traveling if I wasn't such a freak about collecting airline memorabilia. Inside the kit was a variety of products including - paper, a moisture mask, a comb, eye mask, a dental kit (toothbrush and toothpaste), a packet of tissue, ear plugs (inside the black plastic egg), a small bottle of Loewe cologne, and a tube of lip balm from Parisian brand Institut Karite.
While I was busy digging through the amenity kits, Zach had already had his seat converted to a bed by one of the FAs and was sound asleep, moisture mask and eye shades creating a rather goofy visual. That's my guy, hands off folks! Of note though - Zach is 6'3", and as you can see fits rather comfortably into the bed. He has his legs up but that's because that's how he sleeps, he'd be able to stretch full out if needed.
I've reviewed JL's flights a few times in the past and have often lambasted their in-flight entertainment as one of their weakest elements. Things haven't changed over the years nor does first class offer a better option for the IFE. With this in mind, I decided my best bet was to join Zach and sleep for a bit. I asked the FA to make my seat into a bed while I stepped away to the lavatory near the front of the plane to change into my pajamas.
Our fellow first class passengers were on the same wave length as they had all also gone to bed already. The curtains were drawn separating the lighted areas by the lavatories from the passenger area, which already had its lights dimmed.
I stepped into the lavatory to change. The space provided wasn't really much more than you'd find in economy class on your standard plane, which is a bit of let down. Still, being JL, it was a very clean bathroom. Even though it was almost spotless, inside the lavatory was a platform which you could unhook from the wall and lower to the floor so you can change out of your clothes without putting your feet on the ground.
I quickly changed out of my clothes and into the pajamas. They'd work really well on a US-based airline but for an Asian carrier they're a bit too much as the cabins are generally warmer and this fabric isn't as breathable or airy as others I've seen. Despite the dental kit inside the amenity kits, packets of mouthwash and pre-packaged toothbrushes with paste were laid out for use.
