Review of Korean Air flight from Seoul to Paris in Economy

This FR is the last segment of an unforgettable summer vacation back in 2014. The grand finale? My readers will tell for themselves.
CDG - NRT : Air France (Boeing 777-300ER) Sunrise
NRT - DPS : Garuda Indonesia (Boeing 777-300ER) The island of Gods
DPS - JOG : Garuda Indonesia (Boeing 737-800) The city of the Ramayana
JOG - SUB : Sriwijaya Air (Boeing 737-800) A zero height volcano
MLG- DPS : Wings Air (ATR72-600) The sulfur volcano
DPS -ICN : Garuda Indonesia (Airbus 330-300) The calm of the morning
ICN – CDG : Korean Air (Airbus 380-800) Bad flight YOU ARE HERE
This FR begins at the airside Departure level, after going through a nondescript security check.

My first priority was to go to a KE counter to try to obtain a window seat, because I had been given in DPS boarding passes with the worst possible combination of seats : two non-window non-aisle seats in the center of a row. I never determined what “Special request” meant on the left of these BPs.

I remembered from a previous connection in ICN that there was a counter for that at the upper level (there are actual several), and finding one was easy. There was zero waiting time, like the last time I had been there.

No problem ; there was no remaining window seat on the right (looking north, betting for lighting reasons). Seat 53A would be Southside, but far behind the wing, which was best, because there is no view when you are over-wing in a 380, due to the steep curvature of the wing.

We could not go to a lounge (Mrs. Marathon could at most pay to get there, due to her FB-Silver status), and we went down to the main level closer to Gate 17.

A sweets shop on the way.

Gate 17 was at the far end of one of the two symmetrical jetties which extend from Terminal 1 out in the direction of terminal 2. The way to get there looked desert because there was so much space.

Water fountains on the way, with two height levels

.. and immaculate toilets

There was a baby seat to place him safely while you do your business, like in Japan.

There were of course toilets for handicapped people, and also for small children.

An electric curiosity : this power plug next to a paper towel dispenser is Type F, not Type B like in the rest of the terminal, and is protected by both a 30 mA differential circuit breaker and a plastic hood against water splashes.

I used this plentiful orchid decoration as a foreground to a FIDS

There were fewer flights than you would think, because sharecoded flights took as many lines as airlines shared them.

The end of the jetty turned out to be both quiet (because it was a dead end) and ideally plane spotter friendly, because closer to the taxiing planes, and also with a fair view of one of the runways.

There was a shop selling various items inside this semi-circle.

There was only one flight boarding at any given time in the half dozen gates nearby and the place was therefore not overpopulated.

The blueish pillars signaled the presence of power ports. I have never seen anywhere else simultaneously 110V and 220V power ports (and USB plugs too).

There was a free wifi internet access, with an acceptable throughput .

The only problem I had was with these giant screens showing various programs. They had an admittedly rather low sound setting, but the equation “not too far from the windows in order to rush when an interesting plane came AND next to a power port AND away from the sound of the giant screens” did not have a solution. I have course chose to optimize the first two criteria.
This was a plane spotter friendly place, the weather was fair, and I had five hours to wait, so I spent them writing a FR and spotting. In the distance, there were the freight facilities, clearly separated between Korean Air on the right

… and Asiana and the other airlines on the left

A KE 747, there are many in ICN

There was a small hump on top of the fuselage of this 747, like on other KE aircraft

This was an antenna providing a satellite link in the Ku band,

… not to be mixed with the antennas inside the aircraft which are up to IEEE standard 802.11 that the general public knows as wifi. The cost of that unescapable satellite link explains the expensive rates of the internet access on board offered by a growing number of airlines, like KE.

KE A330 in special livery. The cloudy sky created adverse lighting conditions and I kept the picture the way it was.

It was better on the ground

Another KE special livery, the Skyteam one.

A more modest KE737

B777 on the ground

… and taking off – the location is ideal for taking these pictures, with an adequate telelens.

Now the other major Korean airline: Asiana, with 777s on the ground

… taking off

… and climbing

And in the alliance’s livery

Smaller Korean aircrafts with 737s belonging to Jin Air

… and Jeju Air (Jeju is THE Korean resort island, off the southern tip of the Korean peninsula)

This A320 is a neighbor : Peach is a Japanese LCC

"Now everyone can fly to Malaysia" :

… this Air Asia slogan was unfriendly

… especially when preceding this MH A330 being towed to her gate.
– Are they that in trouble that they need to be towed ? ", quipped Mrs. Marathon

Let’s continue our Far East tour with Vietjet, a Vietnamese LCC, with an A320 on the ground (with wingtip fences)

… and another one aloft (with sharklets)

The Chinese airlines are also present with China Eastern A320s

… and China Southern

Let’s cross the Straits of Taiwan to see representatives of the other China, with a China Airlines which will fly back to Taipei.

… and a Mandarin Airlines (a subsidiary of China Airlines) E-190 flying back to Kaohsiung

One country, two systems : this A320 is Chinese, but its livery is that of Hong Kong Airlines.

Staying in the Far-Eastern sector, this is a 737 belonging to SAT Airlines, a Russian airline based in Sakhalin Island

SAT merge end of 2013 with Vladivostok Avia into Aurora, and this is their first A319

Next come logically an Aeroflot 777

Surface-wise, Russia is more Asian than European. This is also true of Turkey, although this A330 flew from IST, located a few kilometers inside the tiny European part of the country.

In this review, the only 100% European aircraft was this Finnair A330.

This picture of the boarding of a flight towards Shanghai has a story, although I could stay until the end. See the three Chinese passengers on the right.

They were wondering about what would happen of this red suitcase which was beyond their hand luggage quota. They had opened it and optimized its contents on a seat in front of us before boarding had started. That was solid duty-free stuff, I mean by that that this suitcase which still had its own protective plastic covering had obviously been bought in the duty-free shops like its contents, and it was full.

They were not alone, because these other Chinese travelers arrived with a luggage cart loaded with duty free items.

Our plane had arrived meanwhile.

HL7619, which entered revenue service on 10 December 2012 was going to operate this flight

Boarding started in an orderly manner. There did not seem to be many Skypriority passengers, in consideration of the aircraft capacity.

There were three different jet bridges, one per travel class

The newspapers in the jet bridge were Korean only. Too bad they did not offer at least English language ones. Or was it recognition of the poor average level of the French in English ?

Going alongside a galley where no passenger appeared to be waiting (insiders will understand the allusion).

The missing 46D is due to an emergency exit hatch for the crew rest area which is located below deck.

We were only one row away from an emergency exit :

That provided more visual space,

…but not as much as expected, because the FAs quickly drew the curtains isolating the galley during the entire flight, partitioning the space inside the plane.

The safety card both sides

The seat had a commendably sized IFE screen

.. with a good image quality.

The size of the IFE for the geeks

Without much surprise, the headphones were rather poor

Table in two parts

The seat pitch was downright enormous for an economy non-emergency exit seat

Even though there was a lot of miscellaneous stuff in the magazine pocket, there were still 31cm of space in front of the seat, whereas I usually measure hardly more than 25 cm in economy. Note that there was a bottle of water for each passenger.

The width between the armrests was correct. The window seat had a small bonus on the fuselage side, due to its curvature which leaves extra space beyond the armrest.

The seat did not recline much:

There was a multistandard power port underneath each block of three seats. They were not powered 100%of the time, but delivered well enough power to my laptop to hold the entire flight time.

The amenity kit contained a toothbrush and a pair of slippers folded in two. A face mask would have been more useful – I’ll come back to that later.

This KE aircraft heading towards the runway on a parallel taxiway …

… will pass in front of us

Take off, with a view on Terminal 1

… and then of the airport’s parking lots

A rather fast distribution of a drink (coca cola, here) and a bag of peanuts.

Wing view after reaching the cruise altitude above the cloud cover

Lunch was served quickly (this was already the start of the afternoon), in Western version for Mrs. Marathon

… and Korean for me. Lower right, a rather ordinary soup with seaweeds. Each of us liked the food. Note the presence of good quality metal silverware.

The route of ICN towards Europe is very complicated, because the aircraft must navigate and avoid North Korea and Chinese military airspace, especially that above Dalian, a heavily militarized peninsula.

KE was not very generous with regards to coffee : the shape of the cup which was not filled much made it possible to take a lot of space while limiting its volume (the volume of a cone is one third that of a cylinder of the same maximum diameter, in case you forgot all of Geometry 201). And then that coffee was quite diluted.

I dozed off somewhat after the meal, and that is when the flight experience capsized.

A FA woke me up and asked me to lower my window shade. My memories of a previous KE901 flight came back at once: KE mandates that their passengers travel in the dark on daytime long haul flights, and that is nonnegotiable. This absurdity goes as far as not providing a face mask on these flights, as opposed to night flights when they are less useful. That this FA woke me up (I reminded her that) to then force me to type my Flight Report (since I was now awake) in the dark put me in a very bad mood. I did not raise the tone of my voice because I am not this kind, but I was extremely stern, all the more that the margin for negotiation was nil for both parties. The FA could say nothing other than “I’m sorry”, her colleague eventually volunteered the explanation that after the meal came time for rest… until the end of the flight. Another FA with a red badge (the chief purser?) came and brought nothing more to the debate. I did accept to lower the shade, but not fully, so that I could have some natural light.
Never had the culture gap which separates me from the Koreans had appeared to me so vividly. Korea is not the Asia of ideograms which is so familiar to me: it is the same Far-Eastern civilization, but a culture and communication codes which are different from the ones prevailing in Japan, China and Taiwan, respectively. The visual expression are not the same between these countries: the smiles of the KE FAs were completely frozen and seemed artificial to me (and to Mrs. Marathon too). The dozens of “I’m sorry” that they repeated without a single variation had a robot-like feel and I felt them like “I couldn’t care less”.
It was all the more frustrating that in the hours following this exchange, the passengers at seats 53A, B, C were all active, some working, and that light was unlikely to disturb them.

This conflict was an advantage and a drawback. The advantage was that my resulting bad temper kept me awake, and staying awake was the best thing to do to rest myself into the French time zone. The drawback was that the visual discomfort and the frustration at not being able to keep looking for interesting landscapes made the flight feel long, very long.
A zig-zagging Siberian river,

… somewhere around here :

I sent the remainder of the flight with the shade this way, to have a minimal amount of natural lighting. The FA did not come back, but Mrs. Marathon saw some whispering between a FA and passengers behind us – maybe excuses about this French passengers who behaved in such a gross antisocial manner - comments of natives are welcome in this matter.

Quite frankly, Siberia is mostly a very monotonous landscape ; what is worth seeing is mostly north of the route and there was a nearly total could cover on the way, but I nevertheless managed to see Lake Baikal, surreptitiously photographed here like if it had been a military zone. AF had never forbidden me to look at it on my flights between CDG and PEK; it was for me a reference point exactly two hours away from PEK each way.

Sludyanka and Kultuk, at the southern end of the lake

Small clouds later on the way

This is what a long haul daytime flight cabin per KE rules : completely dark, with drawn galley curtains. Not quite the way KE wanted it, because a window shade is not perfectly drawn at row 53. Also note that most IFE screens are on.

There was a duty free stand in the rear, with a FA who was as motionless as the bottles of alcohol. Like these street artists who imitate statues, she did not make a single move or change her expression as passengers passed by her to/from the toilets. It was a fascinating performance.

That allowed me to take a picture of their famous rigid knot in the hair. I personally find the KE female FA uniform quite insipid, but that was a detail for me. The male FAs had a rather ordinary completely dark suit.

I did not try to go upstairs – this was business class only

A tablet and an advertising curtain in front of the rear door.

The other FAs had all disappeared towards the front of the aircraft. They were invisible during the flight except for meal and drink services whose timing was provided in the in-flight magazine : two meals and two (or was it three?) drink services, with orange or pineapple juice and water.

The toilets were spotlessly clean

More surreptitious pictures of the wing from under the slightly raised window shade

… and the wingtip fence

Mood lighting for waking up the passengers

Dinner comes, but the passengers did not raise their window shades anyway. Was it because it is already night in Korea time when they have their dinner? I later asked a Korean colleague and she could not provide me any cultural explanation for this insistence that the cabin should be dark during the flight.
I chose the Korean menu. The FA warned me that it was spicy, but my life in China has immunized me against most spicy foods.

That was what it looked like after unwrapping. It was good, and not very spicy in my scale which has a very wide range.

Mrs. Marathon who has not been immunized in a similar manner chose the milder version of the hot meal

The same half conical cup of watered down coffee

And pictures of the landscape during a rare moment without clouds: the tip of Sliteres national Park, in Latvia.

This was where we were some time later according to the air show.

.. but I did not succeed in identifying this town (the poor visibility did not help)

Afterwards, it was rather this that I would see each time I would raise furtively my window shade.

I nevertheless never get enough of this wing view ; the A380 is one of the very few aircraft where you have a fair view of the reactors while sitting in economy behind the wings.

Only at the last moment in the descent towards CDG had the FA the passengers raise the window shades which had been dutifully kept strictly down until roughly ETA – 10’.

End of the descent and the passengers discover the French countryside north of Paris, which had had daylight during all the time when it was dark in KE-land.

Landing on time in CDG

The FA with whom I had the lengthiest exchange was just ahead of my row, saluting the disembarking passengers. She repeated again her apologetic litany of "I am sorry" that I interrupted curtly : "A Korean Air flight is a bad flight, and that's it".
Going through the first class cabin

And a glimpse of the front landing gear

A last blink at the KE 388 that I was impatient to leave to be at last in real daylight. It was an endless walk in Terminal 2E: we spent no less than 20 minutes from this picture and the next one, even though there was no waiting at the automated PARAFE passport and fingerprint reading booths.

Mrs. Marathon had received special care from GA during the preceding flight due to her FB-Silver status, and received the other bonus : our luggage had been tagged as Priority in DPS, and it took us so much time to reach the luggage delivery room in CDG that they were already waiting for us there.

We then had to go through the entire luggage delivery room to make it landside, and go all the way in the reverse direction to head towards the train station. Mrs. Marathon saw through the windows the crowd of Flight KE901 passengers who were still waiting for their luggage.
I do not have a Korean tourist bonus available, Bali was already far away, and offer you a Java tourist bonus, as an epilogue of this trip in Indonesia. Indonesia is one of several Asian countries where smiling kids love being photographed.

.. having fun

… or posing seriously

Some here where more shy than their friends who came up to me.

On the other hand, when there is a festival, everybody is relaxed

.. both kids

… and parents guiding the younger ones during the parade

Parade or not parade, some groups would stop spontaneously to pose for photographers. Wearing a veil from the youngest age (for most of them) or not did not seem to be a factor, contrary to other Muslim countries in the world.

Being in Java (and presumably anywhere in Indonesia) around August 17th (the National Day) is a guarantee for stumbling upon local festivals and their parades. Better incorporate generous margins in your schedule if you are plan to go anywhere, because a parade can create traffic jams which would be hopeless messes if the Indonesian drivers did not play it fair and patient.

They can create really devilish traffic jams, an apt word

The parades… some groups belong to the folklore (which is very alive), and then there are the school parades.

There were marching for kilometers between their school and the location of the festival, first the girls and then the boys.

There were 39 groups of girls this time, followed by 39 groups of boys, each bearing a highly visible number.

It of course did not take much to create traffic backlogs behind. Drivers who happened to be in the wrong direction at the wrong time had up to 78 groups to pass. Fewer than that, actually, because the first group had reached its destination long before the first started on the road.

Each group had its own uniform, very different from each other, with highly veiled variants like these

… others with a rather disparate set of veil and cap like these

… or very Western ones.

It was just as diversified with boys, ranging from a simple white shirt

… to a really military look

But all, boys and girls, had a surprising rubber stamp mark on the cheek (see the explanation by BombieFlyer in the comments below)

It was not pure chance if I had chosen to include the "Wonderful Indonesia" touristic slogan on the Garuda Indonesia 333 in the title picture of the report on the previous flight. Young or old, from Java or from Bali, all the Indonesians that we met have contributed to making our vacation a wonderful, and rigid Korean FAs would not spoil our memory.
Now is the time to go back to the topic and the conclusion of this flight, after this Teenager Fashion 2014 bonus that you probably did not expect here.