For my return flight to Singapore from Japan, I managed to secure a redemption on JAL through Alaska Mileage Plan, from Osaka Itami (ITM) to Singapore (SIN) with an overnight stopover in Tokyo. While a slightly roundabout way to get home, I did not mind the overnight in Tokyo as well, as it would give me the chance to spend time in Japan’s two biggest cities post-reopening. By opting for an overnight, I could also avoid an early morning departure from ITM to connect directly to the HND-SIN flight.
Since this entire ticket was a business class redemption, the domestic leg from Itami to Tokyo Haneda booked into JAL’s domestic business ‘Class J’. With a typical flight time of around 50min, there wasn’t much in the way of service on this flight, nor was I expecting much.
I’ve flown ANA many times before, albeit internationally, but never JAL. I was looking forward to my first experience with them. Of course, a 50min domestic hop isn’t the best measure of JAL’s quality. While JAL managed to surprise me in some pleasant ways, the experience was badly marred by blunder from the check-in staff at Itami.
Read on to find out what went well, and what went badly wrong at check-in.
Booking
As mentioned, I booked this ITM-HND, HND-SIN ticket through Alaska Mileage Plan. AS Mileage Plan is one of the best programmes to redeem JAL tickets, and this business class redemption cost me 25,000 Mileage Plan miles. Once I did the booking through Mileage Plan, I was able to use the partner (JL) booking reference provided by AS to do seat selection on JL’s website.
Check-in
JAL operates from the North Terminal at Osaka’s Itami Airport. To get to Itami, I hopped on an airport limousine bus from opposite the Hilton Osaka, where I had stayed. I arrived at the airport at around 3.20pm for my 4.35pm flight JL126. Upon entering the terminal, I saw a line of counters right in front of me, so I headed there. What I did not notice was that these were for passengers with a subsequent international connection. As it turned out later, I was actually in the right place.
As I approached the counters, a staff member minding the queue stopped me to enquire where I was travelling to. The conversation went something like this (the English has been cleaned up a bit):
Staff: Where are you travelling to?
Me: Haneda
Staff: Do you have an international connection?
Me: I am travelling to Singapore tomorrow. But today only Haneda, and I want to check-in only to Haneda
After some hesitation, the queue minder let me through. I headed to the economy class counter, since the premium counters were occupied. First, we went through the same back and forth I just had with the queue minder. Then things turned for the worse:
(after repeating the same lines as above)
Check-in Staff: So you are travelling to Haneda only?
Me: Today Haneda only. Tomorrow Singapore.
Staff: Then you have to use the kiosk (gestures to domestic check-in kiosks on other side of the terminal). You cannot check-in here
Now, I’ve never flown domestically in Japan, on any airline, and to be fair it was only at this point that I realised this check-in was international connections only. So at this point I thought I was indeed mistaken, and grudgingly trekked over to the domestic check-in kiosks with my bags.
When I got to the kiosks, I tried to check-in by pulling up my booking reference. That’s when I noticed the system needed an eight or twelve character confirmation number. That I definitely didn’t have, so I called a staff member over and showed her my confirmation email. She immediately recognised that I have an international sector on the ticket, and told me I’ll have to check-in at international connections.
Having walked from one end of the terminal to the other, now I was being told to go back to the original end I had started from. That’s going to piss off anyone, and boy did I get pissed off. When I returned to international connections, I’ll admit I had some strong words for the first check-in staff, which I doubt she even understood. Thankfully I was able to utilise the business class counter this time, where the staff had better English and was much more competent. While she was initially hesitant because I wanted to check-in to Haneda only, she eventually did realise this was an international ticket and thus, I was in the right place.
I did not let the matter rest there. I requested to speak to a supervisor, and after confirming she understood sufficient English, I explained to her in my opinion what her staff had done wrongly. In my view, both the queue minder and first check-in staff had focused on the wrong thing and asked the wrong questions. They knew I was travelling on to Singapore the next day, yet this fact seemed to just go over their heads. After all, these counters were likely to see more non-Japanese speaking foreigners. They were fixated on the fact I was only travelling to Haneda that day. Instead of getting fixated on that, they should have asked if it was a single ticket. I won’t deny that language barrier may have been an issue here, but shouldn’t staff working at international connections have better English proficiency?
In any case, after a few minutes of remonstrating with staff who probably only understood half of what I was saying, I went on my way after the usual polite assurances that they will improve the training. I’ll be repeating exactly the same routing during Sakura season next year, so now I know how to handle the check-in staff appropriately.
Boarding
After the heated check-in, I headed upstairs to security which was almost devoid of other passengers. Class J passengers do not get lounge access, unless they have a same-day international connection on JAL First or Business. Flights departing up to 6am the next day are considered same-day. Since my flight to SIN the next day was at 1130am, I did not have lounge access for this domestic leg. With boarding commencing at 4.15pm, I had over half an hour to kill. I decided to just find a seat at the gate area to chill. At around 3.40pm, the aircraft arrived at the gate inbound from Haneda.
Boarding commenced promptly at 4.15pm, starting with pre-boarding then group 1. Group 1 and 2 is priority boarding for first class and frequent flyer elites. JAL practices back to front, window seat-first boarding for domestic flights, so Class J is actually last to board in group 5. Boarding was swift, and I was onboard at 4.25pm. Most Class J passengers were probably JAL elites, and I was one of the last few to board.
Though boarding was only through door 1, it was completed quickly and we pushed back right on time at 4.35pm.
Onboard
My seat was 16A, a window side on the left side of the second Class J cabin, behind door 2. There’s a total of 58 Class J seats across two sections on this 787-8. The configuration is 2-3-2, although in the second cabin where I was seated, the left side has four rows while the middle and right columns have three rows each.
The Class J is essentially to an international premium economy seat, though it’s not the same seat JAL uses for international premium economy. JAL states the seat is 49cm (~19.3in) wide, with a pitch of approx 97cm (~38in). Again quite comparable to international premium economy.
Every seat on the 787-8 is equipped with a personal monitor for IFE. Class J gets an 11.6in touchscreen, though a remote was available if needed.
There were basic controls for the seat recline and legrest, as seen above. On this short sub-50min flight, I put neither of those features to the test.
In-seat power was available, as well as USB. The universal power outlet was located between the seats, while the USB port was built into the monitor. The headphone jack was located beside the USB port.
Headphones were provided, but they didn’t look of great quality, so I didn’t use them. They came wrapped in plastic, I guess to show it’s clean/new.
Back to the seat, a coat hook was located on the shell of the seat in front.
A reading light was between the seats, attached to the seat shell by one of those flexible arms.
A bi-fold tray table was stored in the armrest between the seats. This seemed more sturdy than the flimsy one on my Scoot flight up to Osaka.
On the opposite armrest was a little storage nook, useful storing a tablet, book or other small items.
After takeoff, the crew quickly sprung into action to provide a drinks service. I requested for a cup of cold sugar-free green tea aka ayataka. Only one pass of drinks cart was made, and no refills were offered.
I had a browse through the IFE, there were only a couple of movies, handful of TV programmes and some ebooks. None interested me, so I mostly left it on the flight map.
The best inflight entertainment was out the window anyway. When I selected my seat, I guessed the flight path would take us south of Mt Fuji, hence my choice of an “A” seat. We did indeed pass fairly close to My Fuji. What a great sight it was, to see Mt Fuji emerging from the clouds!
To my surprise, JAL offers free unlimited wifi on domestic flights. Download speed was decent for inflight wifi, with a Speedtest on my Note 10+ clocking in at 6.43MB/s. The ping was a pretty bad 717ms though.
Arrival
The approach into Haneda got quite bumpy, mostly due to the low and thick cloud layer. We touched down at close to 5.35pm, 10min ahead of schedule. We were at the gate 5min later at Haneda Terminal 1. Disembarkation was swift, but the bags took a little while. Unfortunately there’s no priority handling for Class J. There was this interesting thingy at the baggage carousel to look at while waiting though:
From baggage claim, it was down to Keikyu Line platform to catch the train straight to the Conrad Tokyo.
Conclusion
There isn’t much to comment on such short a flight. Normally I’d actually prefer the Shinkansen, but since this was a single ticket it was a good opportunity to try JAL’s domestic service. The free inflight wifi is a nice touch that I appreciated. The seat was adequate for such a short flight, but I can see why they call it ‘Class J’ rather than business class. The fiasco at check-in though, was totally unnecessary and could have been avoided if the staff were better trained. With that rough start to my JAL experience, would they redeem themselves on the longer flight back to Singapore the next day? Stay tuned for that review to find out!
Have you flown JAL’s domestically? What was your experience like? Let me know in the comments!