For my summer break, I planned another trip to Hanoi to visit my family.
Booking was a bit tricky, as I had other members departing from PUS on VJ981 on the 5th of July, so I had to arrive with or before them. I had the option of going with Vietnam Airlines and their evening flight on the day before for about 100,000KRW more than the Vietjet itinerary that I ended up choosing. I didn't want to bother the hosts to pick us up twice back to back.
The price for the flight ended up being about 340,000KRW, which is pretty standard for a Vietjet flight during the vacation season. I remember when Vietjet first launched flights to Korea, they had offers ranging as low as 91USD. This also makes my previous itinerary to Hanoi on Asiana's A330 seem even cheaper.
As usual, I used the airport bus to get to the airport. As my flight leaves at an ungodly time of 6 in the morning, I took the 2AM night bus to get to the airport, where check in starts at 3:10AM. As ICN is basically Vietjet's Korean hub, it is advisable to get to the airport pretty early.
The bus route from Seongnam to ICN is always in hot demand, so if you by a slim chance need to get to Seongnam from the airport, it's necessary to get tickets as soon as possible. Especially if the bus is scheduled early in the morning.
The bus took about 50 minutes. Our bus has an 'N' in front of the number to signify that this is a night bus. You can see this numbering for night buses in Seoul as well.
Check in was well underway when I arrived at the desks. It was already packed with Vietjet passengers, and it was pretty organized with desks divided for each destination. Our Hanoi line seemed to be the longest, which was surprising considering Hanoi is probably the least popular destination in Vietnam for Koreans. It seemed like there were a lot of Vietnamese nationals.
This is how you know you're on a flight to Vietnam. Loads of boxes with huge names written. I don't know what's in them or why you'd need such a big box but I guess it's cheaper than shipping it?
Honestly pretty ridiculous.
Check in took about 50 minutes, but security only took about ten minutes. Overall, an hour after arrival I was through to airside. The departure halls seemed to be empty apart from the Vietjet desks, so security didn't take any time.
An empty Airstar Avenue. It was even dimly lit because there was no reason for passengers other than Vietjet's to be roaming around airside at that time.
The FIDS for this early hour.
HL7732 counter for 2025 +1 (It's up to 3 now)
The new OneWorld lounge that was met with a lot of fanfare and the rebranded Korean Air lounge. Of course, I couldn't get in.
I made my way to the satellite terminal after roaming around T1 for about 50 minutes.
The train that runs between T1 and the satellite terminal runs every 2 minutes. Honestly, not that big of a fuss if you don't have much carry-on.
The T'way Pokemon livery HL8306 seen through quite dirty windows. Actually a bit surprising because I always found ICN to be pretty good when it comes to keeping the windows clean.
Another one for T'way airlines. This time, an A330 HL8560 which is an ex-AirAsia X frame, along with HL8561. The other three A330-300s (HL8500, HL8501, HL8502) are all ex-Aeroflot frames, though they all seem to have the same configuration now.
This is our plane for today, an A321neo registered VN-A530. Funnily enough, this exact frame would be the one that would take me back from HAN to ICN as well, which is definitely a first for me.
Before my flight, VJ962/VJ963 was flown by a mix of A321 neos and ceos, with ceos being more common. I was hoping to get A321neos because of the newer seats, but in the end it didn't really matter.
All of the early morning Vietjet flights got delayed except for my flight to Hanoi. What an amazing bit of luck. I really feel for the VJ881 passengers to Da Nang. Another surprising thing is how Vietjet has direct flights to Haiphong. Don't know how there's enough demand for a flight.
One thing that separates T1 with the satellite terminal is the fact that the satellite terminal has these LED panels that signal the flight under the big gate number sign. It's very useful and I don't know why they haven't applied it to the main terminal as well.
Boarding started on time and I waited until the end to board, as it was pretty chaotic when boarding started. Later on, however, I found out that this would be a pretty bad choice.
I was one of the last to board, but still you can see the line formed.
As the line moved at a snail's pace, I was able to get a shot of something I would've otherwise missed. You can see all the legal stuff and the lessor.
This was the view from seat 37F. There was another Vietjet A321neo which just arrived.
The view of the cabin. It seemed like it was a full flight. The reason for the long lines was here, in that there were too many carry-on stuff that the overhead bins were pretty much full, with 30% of the passengers still yet to store their luggage. I also had a duffle bag and a backpack with me, and although I put my backpack under the seat in front, I obviously couldn't do that with my duffle bag so the crew made space for it way up front of the cabin. All in all, a very chaotic series of events.
We taxied via R9, M enroute to 16L for our departure. This Delta A350 had arrived from ATL as DL27 and is resting until its departure to DTW as DL158. It's fascinating to see the way Delta has set up at ICN. With all 5 or so flights in an A350, albeit in different configs, it has room to play around with its schedules. The ATL-ICN-DTW-ICN-ATL is pretty standard, and an A350 might arrive from MSP and be put on a flight to SEA just a few hours later.
Garuda's PK-GPY also in a Pokemon livery along with HL8306 seen taxiing to the gate after landing from CGK. Looks like this also had a bit of a scheduling conflict as it departed at 8AM as GIA879D. I'd presume it's been delayed a whole day, as Garuda planes from CGK and DPS arrive at around 8 to 9AM.
My first time seeing the new livery in person, and it's very underwhelming, to put it lightly. I just wish they'd integrated the silver better. They seem to be going away from the red, which I will let go, but no silver as well just makes it plain boring.
IN THIS PICTURE: a stored Korean Air A380, a 767-200 which belonged to Thailand's SkyStar Airways but was seized by ICN due to failure of payment, and an Asiana 777 registered HL7739 with its engines off, seemingly with its Asiana life done.
HL7528 is also here, maybe final checks before accepting its fate. It was ferried out of ICN just last month, on December 2025.
We took off from ICN on runway 16L without much waiting, as it was early morning. As the engines spooled up and we gained acceleration, I could hear the bags overhead being pushed back.
As I was assigned a seat so far back, I couldn't get a good view of the wing. This was over a city called Dangjin (당진), about 10 minutes into the flight. Normally, after departure southbound flights get permission to go direct to SADLI and bypass Y711 as it is a very crowded track. However, we didn't get that on this flight.
The cabin after reaching cruising altitude. Food was served to those who ordered, and I tried to watch a movie on my tablet. This quickly fell apart and I slept the whole way. When I woke up, we were already in Vietnamese airspace.
As we descend, the layer of smoke that covers the city of Hanoi can be clearly seen.
We landed on runway 11L as usual, which was quite bumpy as the plane seemed to have a hard time being kept on the centerline. HAN never seems to get winds for runway 29 ops, as I've never used those runways in my 11 years of flying through HAN.
We parked at our gate, next to an AirAsia A321neo. Another shocker was how nobody seemed to have the courtesy of respecting the seatbelt sign. I've seen plenty of times people turning their airplane modes off or unbuckling their seatbelts while taxiing back, but I've never seen such a mess of people jumping straight out of their seats as soon as the brakes were set. It looked like even the crew were kind of surprised, and it didn't happen on the return flight.
After another mess of events, I deplaned and made my way up to the fourth floor after security checks were done to see my plane again. This would coincidentally be the same plane I'd be on for the return flight as VJ960, which I've also flown about three times, which is definitely up there with OZ733 as two of my most used lines.
A picture from the return flight, as it probably wouldn't get a full report. I lucked out and managed to get an engine view.
One interesting thing is how only VIetjet routes the HAN-ICN route over the Yellow Sea, and not Y722 via Jeju. They constantly seem to be doing this, and I just feel like there just has to be a reason as to why.
