Hello from Japan! I arrived in Tokyo Haneda on Japan Airlines’ new(ish) A350, flying in their new business class seats from New York-JFK. While a full review will follow later, I wanted to give a short(ish) overview of what it was like for those of you that are interested.

1. Check-in experience
2. The JFK Terminal 8 Greenwhich lounge
3. JAL’s new A350 business class seat feels private and cozy
4. Inflight amenities are good, but sometimes comically complicated and entertainment is lacking
5. The food is great
6. The service is very attentive, though a little inefficient
7. Summary

Check-in experience

At JFK, Japan Airlines departs from Terminal 8, and sorts its passengers into First, Business/Premium economy, and Economy. Check-in was smooth and the attendant was lovely. She was courteous and friendly without being overly familiar. She stepped out of her counter to hand me the boarding pass and explained all the details, including the departure time, fare class, seat number and boarding group, and she made special mention of the name of the lounge, as well as where to locate it. I appreciated this extra gesture – it can really make a difference in the whole experience.

The JFK Terminal 8 Greenwhich lounge

The lounge JAL sends you to is the Greenwhich lounge, which you can get to by going straight ahead after securing and taking a left in the direction of gate 1. Soon enough you’ll see overhead signage to ‘Airline lounges’, and you’ll find elevators with silver lettering: Greenwhich lounge. The lounge itself is a floor above the concourse.
 
I’ll post a longer lounge review later on, but for now, suffice to say that I much enjoyed my two hours at this lounge. First of all, it’s massive. I counted four separate seating ‘areas’ with two buffets of different size and three bars, the largest of which included the main buffet, and initially I sat here with a sampling plate to try the different foods. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality, but since I had had dinner already at home, I didn’t overindulge. Other amenities included a phone room and showers.

The second seating area is referred to as the ‘Tasting Room’, and turned out to be a Brooklyn Brewery-branded lounge, with booths and chairs, designed to allow guests to taste a flight of four Brooklyn beers.

Continuing on through the Tasting Room you emerge in a third seating area with both lounge chairs and single-person ‘booths’, a bar and a small buffet, offering snacks and sandwiches rather than a full meal. Beyond this space was ‘The Bridge’, which was a lovely space that is quite literally a bridge over the plaza that follows the security checkpoint, and featured another bar.

JAL’s new A350 business class seat feels private and cozy

Lets cut right to the chase: I really like JAL’s A350 seat. The privacy seems hard to match. The height of the walls and doors to each suite are remarkable, and during the flight I barely noticed there were even other people in the cabin. Waiting for me at my suite were a pillow, blanket, mattress pad and ‘relaxation wear’ (some sort of thick night gown and slippers), as well as a very colorful amenity kit, two bottles of water, headphones, a refreshing (warming) eye/beauty mask and a full menu.

The second thing you’ll notice once seated, is the amount of storage. Particularly notable were the shallow wardrobe to hold a coat, the little compartment below it to hold your shoes, and I also like the little lidded shelf to put valuable, such as your wallet and phone. I also loved the size of the foot well, which featured an ottoman, with space underneath to place my carry-on. There is also ample space to leave stuff on the side console, with sufficient room to keep any drinks and snacks you may have ordered, as well as your phone or anything else you’d like to store.

The seat also has some nice tech, such as in-seat speakers in the headrest. You can also pair your own headphones, which I didn’t do, and there were also ample charging ports as well as wireless charing. This, unfortunately didn’t work well for me as finding the exact spot to place your phone was not easy. There is also a remote control, which I found to be useful. The screen is a touchscreen, but is just far enough away that the remote may be a more comfortable way to control the inflight entertainment.

I thought the seat was comfortable for the long flight. It’s fairly wide, allowing you to sit in various positions. It was comfortable and cozy in bed mode, and I enjoyed setting the seat to a mid-way lounging position while watching a movie. The one thing I didn’t like was the tray table. It was a little high for me and I didn’t find a wya to lower it. Also, stowing the tray table was surprisingly unintuitive.

Inflight amenities are good, but sometimes comically complicated and entertainment is lacking

Let me start with the bedding. The pillow was a little flimsy, the mattress pad quite thin, though the blanket was nice. I liked that it was soft to the touch. JAL also gives you ‘relaxation wear’, which I thought would be the well-known JAL cardigan, but appears to be something of a nightgown, but of heavier fabric. I saw others wear it, but I did not – I had brought my pajama along and switched into that shortly after takeoff.

The amenity kit that JAL provides comes in a cute, colorful little bag. Inside you’ll find a toothbrush, a ‘pocket tissue’, ear plugs, an eye mask made of a lovely, soft fabric, and two rather novel things that I really liked: a JAL-branded phone charging cable with USB-A on one end, and on the other a swappable lightning/USB-C plug, and a phone stand.

As for the inflight entertainment, the bright 24” HD monitor was really fantastic – but it’s a pity there’s not too much to watch on it. There is a selection of Japanese and Western (‘Hollywood’) movies, though even the ‘recent releases’ seemed like were already over a year old or so for the most part. So, I ended up settling for a Japanese movie, which was probably not a good idea, given that it was a horror/thriller and was a rather unsettling thing to watch right before going to sleep. They also head ‘Fly me to the Moon’, which was an enjoyable watch, and one of the most recent releases JAL seemed to have. There were also some JAL-branded movies on being a pilot, a small selection of TV shows and movies, and of course the moving map. A neat feature of the A350 are the onboard cameras, that give a forward or tail view, but since it was night, there was little to look at until landing.

For the lavatories, the A350 seems to have 3 lavatories around the center gala between the two business class cabins. They were a little cramped, but the design was nice and included some nice amenities, such as various lotions, but also razors, tooth brushes and mouth wash. While the lavatories were kept nice and clean throughout the flight, these amenities were not restocked. By the end of the flight most of these were unfortunately all gone.

Finally, a word on the inflight wifi, which was comically difficult to get connected to. You first connect to inflight wifi, which presents you with various payment options. You then need to connect to a second website to register an account, so that you can obtain your unique wifi code there after supplying JAL membership number, seat number, name and reservation confirmation code. Then you go back to the first website to submit the code, and if you’d like to connect different devices rather than just the one, you’ll also need to setup a user account to allow you to reconnect… As such, the process requires something like 10-12 separate steps, which fortunately are all detailed in a guide that was available at the seat. It just feels like this could be massively simplified…

The food is great

One thing I was really looking forward to was the food, since I had already seen some reviews and impressions before, and these looked amazing. Fortunately, the food did not disappoint. Now, this flight left very late – 12:35am – so I was told before takeoff even that the main meal would be served about 8 hours after takeoff, allowing passengers to sleep first.

Still, perhaps 30 minutes after takeoff, a flight attendant came by to ask if I wanted anything to eat – and how can I say no? There is a rather extensive a la carte dining menu and you cna order whatever you want from it, whenever you want. So I ordered the katsu sandwich – one of my favorite Japanese snacks – as well as the JAL original drink, called SkyTime. It was brought to me promptly, and both were delicious.

The main meal was indeed served about 8 hours after takeoff, and consisted of three courses. Note that you can choose a Japanese or Western-style meal, and I chose the Japanese meal. For both, the meal begins with some mixed nuts, with the first differening. For me, the first course was a bento-style set of small dishes, most of which were very tasty and had impeccable presentation. I thought the fish was perhaps a little overdone, but regardless, everything was flavorful. Also, the stylish ‘origami’ bird is to place your chopsticks on – a nice little touch!

The second course consisted of another set of small dishes, and included simmered pork, salt-grilled yellowtail, some vegetables, steamed rice and miso soup.

Finally, the dessert was a mixed berry and banana cobbler, which was as tasty as the other dishes. Overall, it was an impressive meal. A lot of food, with great flavors – a very nice way to get started with Japanese cuisine on this trip!

Finally, as service was wrapping up, a flight attendant again passed by to ask if I had any last orders, and so I ordered the ‘Hideki Matsui’ curry, a recipe by the mother of NY Yankees player Hideki Matsui. Truth be told, this should have been heated more evenly, as some bites of rice were cold. That said, the flavor was terrific. I love Japanese curry and this dish certainly hit the spot. Note that this dish seems to be an A350 exclusive, and isn’t offered on any other planes in the JAL fleet.

The service is very attentive, though a little inefficient

This is where things might get a little controversial, because in most reviews people tend to rave of the service aboard Japanese airlines. There is absolutely no denying that the flight attendants do their best to give you excellent service. They are generally responsive, attentive, polite and helpful. However, I did feel that the service was somewhat inefficient, and not as polished as I might have expected it.

Once I was about settled, the purser came by to introduce herself. I was quite startled when she suddenly appeared and rather hurriedly began to rattle through her spiel. She was perfectly friendly, but I was caught off-guard. She proceeded to show me all the features of the seat rather quickly, which was useful, but she did it at quite a pace and with what seemed like not much patience, sometimes slamming shut certain compartments. But perhaps there is a cultural divide here that I misunderstood? She smiled all the while, at least.

My other interactions with the crew were generally lovely, though they were far and few between, in part due to the awkward timing of the flight, but also because the suite generates such privacy, that I had little idea of my surroundings for most of the flight. I actually think that this makes the attendant’s work a little more difficult as well, as they may not always be able to see how far along passengers are with their meals. Case in point, though the first course arrived and was cleared timely, I had to call for the attendant to come and clear the second course, and provide the dessert.

All that said, I did enjoy the service. Attendants were always friendly and helpful, but it just seemed a little unpolished to me.

Summary

Overall, this was a very good flight. I loved the seat with the tall walls and doors for incredible privacy and a lot of neat storage compartments. I felt it was thoughtfully designed with useful features that a passenger would gladly make use of. The food was great, being both tasty and looking beautiful. I also enjoyed the few movies that I watched on the beautiful 24″ monitor. However, I do think JAL should invest in more entertainment options, and the service flow may need to be rethought a little, as it was at times slow and inefficient.

Overall, certainly a business class product that I can recommend, and perhaps even reroute for in order to fly it! Full review will come later. My next flight will be the return flight from Tokyo-Narita to Boston on JAL’s Boeing 787 featuring the older business class product with Apex seats. So, this should feature the same service and lovely food, though with a different seat. It will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the A350’s awesome suite! From there, I will fly with Delta BOS-JFK the day after arriving in BOS. Though, if I can find a direct HND-JFK flight I may just cancel the routing through Boston, so let’s see what the future brings us.

Have you already flown on JAL’s A350? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!