Brightly coloured but no dried squid
Written: Aug 19 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Friendly people, clean aircraft, punctual
Cons: Little service on domestic flights
The Bottom Line: More than adequate but some feeding would be nice!
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| vodkaboy's Full Review: ANA All Nippon Airways |
In June I spent a few days in Japan and flew from Tokyo to Sapporo and back.
One of the frustrations about Tokyo is that all international flights go to Narita airport, and almost all domestics use Haneda airport which is between 70 minutes and 2 hours away, depending on the time of day and how busy the “Expressway” is. It makes international connections or domestic connections a breeze, but if you're flying in from overseas and your destination does not have international flights, you have to change airport.
Fortunately the Japanese like things organised, efficient and convenient, even things that do not lend themselves to such unlikely traits. The transfers between the airport are frequent, regular and punctual to the minute not only departing but arriving too which was quite an achievement.
CHECK IN
Technology is well utilised here, with banks of self-service check in machines. The counters in between, staffed by real people, look rather minimal in number with just seven or eight counters of which four were staffed. However there was no queue at all. I chose a cute young lady rather than an impersonal and not-cute machine, and in less than thirty seconds I was being checked in. She was cheerful, friendly, spoke good English and was of course polite. Barely a minute later I was being pointed towards the departures channel.
Security was equally efficient and convenient, designed to make it feel like a fun process – as long as you knew what was going on. At the metal detector there was a pile of little boxes to place keys, coins and other pocket contents. The boxes were coloured, red, blue, green, yellow and more. Were they for sorting pocket contents, in the same way the bins sort paper, plastic and metal for recycling? Can you imagine what would happen if I put a handful of coins into the box for key rings? Or a cell phone into the box for handkerchiefs?
Thankfully there was a steady procession of people, each of whom seemed to drop a handful of stuff into whichever box was nearest. I took a gamble, did likewise, and seconds later I was through. Phew.
BOARDING AND DEPARTURE
I watched an aircraft arriving at the next gate. The chap down on the ramp stood on a truck, marshalling the great Boeing 747 into the gate, waving the ping pong bats. As he crossed his arms, the plane gently stopped alongside the air bridge and he bowed before climbing down as the engines began to slow.
When they called the flight, the passengers formed into two orderly queues to shove the boarding card into the slot and go through. The gate agent said something in Japanese, probably “bon voyage”, though it might have been, “your zip is undone”. There was a similar greeting from a lady in pink overalls at the aircraft door, then I was on board, greeted by a smiling stewardess.
Although at the gate there had seemed to be only 50 or so passengers, more and more appeared coming down the aisle until, in the end, there must have been three times that number on board, so the cabin was about half full.
The safety video was shown, with voiceover on both English and Japanese, then as we started to taxi out, a stewardess came round offering blankets. Once each stewardess had done the required checks in their area, and secured it for departure, she stood facing the rear and bowed before strapping herself into her seat.
There was a nose-wheel showing the view forward as we taxied, through a slight rain, to the runway then took off. We had soon climbed through the cloud and, afterwards, the flight was smooth through sunshine.
SEAT AND COMFORT
The configuration on this 747 “Jumbo” was 3-4-3, in other words three seats on each side and four in the middle. My seat was 54A, a window seat down the back. The overhead locker was large and easily accommodated my cabin bag, along with a small elephant or two. The seat was narrow and small, as economy seats tend to be, but the legroom was surprisingly adequate considering that I am about a foot taller than the average Japanese, and I was more comfortable than I had anticipated.
The cabin was quite bright and cheery; the carpet striped with thin black and thick light grey lines and the seats blue with yellow lines. It sounds odd but looked good.
The cabin temperature was kept quite warm and, as there was no individual air vent, I did find it a little too warm. Despite that, the crew continued giving out blankets and, even more surprising, people accepted them. I did wonder if they realised that these were blankets, not large cold towels, but I assumed so as people used them to cover themselves, not wipe their faces.
SERVICE AND REFRESHMENTS
Once we were cruising, the stewardesses donned jackets and aprons in a variety of colours; one pink, one yellow, one light blue. Again I wondered if this was a hierarchical colour coding but there was nothing obvious to suggest that.
When they were suitably colourfully attired they came round with a drinks trolley offering beers and a presumably edible snack in a white wrapper. I was about to take one then I remembered once, many years ago, on the train from Osaka to Tokyo, I took a snack in a plastic wrapper and discovered it to be dried squid. I let this one go.
Thankfully the ladies came round again soon afterwards with soft drinks, juice, coffee or tea. The stewardess was very elegant, softly spoken, disarmingly cheerful. She was so charming I felt she was wasted serving teas and coffees. She could be talking hostage takers into surrender, pacifying rabid rottweilers or persuading politicians to tell the truth. But such is life.
Teas and coffees were served in a plastic cup, with powdered milk and powdered sugar. Powdered seconds were offered when she came to clear away the empties, which I accepted, being rather dehydrated after a flight from London – I almost felt powdered myself.
The flight was only just over an hour, so there was no inflight entertainment. I did amuse myself by going to the toilet, which I found easily and was very clean and organised.
ARRIVAL
As the plane started to descend the seatbelt signs came on. The crew came round clearing empties, checking fastened seatbelts and making sure all was ready. We landed on time and after a short taxi we were disembarking at Sapporo’s Chitose airport. I noticed that, unlike on most airlines I am used to, everyone did stay in their seat till we had stopped and also that, although I was near the very back, there was not a long wait before I was moving towards the front.
SUMMARY
Overall a pleasant, short hop, specially considering that domestic air travel in Japan is high density, and taking a plane is like taking a train or a bus in other countries.
I am always aware, though, that in the UK airlines manage to provide a meal on short flights. On a 50 minute morning flight from London to Manchester there is a light breakfast provided; on a one hour flight to Glasgow it is a full cooked breakfast complete with bacon and eggs. Compare that to a one hour twenty flight within Japan where you get a plastic cup of tea, or a first class 90 minute flight from Los Angeles where you get juice and nuts (at least that’s what it was last time I flew within the USA, maybe now it is more….or less.) Are the Brits more demanding? I doubt it. Are the airlines in the rest of the world less generous? I leave that to my imagination!
The more observant reader will have noticed that I flew just a couple of domestic flights, which probably don’t give a representative representation of their international service. If the domestic service is any indication, I would expect the longer flights to offer similar comfort, pleasant service, and hopefully just a bit more food.
Recommended:
Yes
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vodkaboy
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