Korean Air to Europe with a toddler

What we found:

Food
The food was quite good – there was always a Western choice and a Korean choice, which turned out to be bibimbap on more than on leg of the journey. I always chose the Korean choice, my husband the Western. The Western meals were standard airline food, quite acceptable and tasty. A couple of times he got beef.
If you don’t know bibimbap, you get a bowl of meat and vegetables (and in some places, a fried egg, although not here), a big portion of hot rice to mix with the veggies, and a small tube of spicy paste and a sachet of sesame oil. You mix these all together with as much spicy paste as you dare. It was more filling than most plane meals – the rice fills you up amply. You also got this with a bowl of hot soup. I highly recommend it because it translated well to the airline setting and because the portion size was so generous.

Children’s meals – enormous and diverse. I was pleased with some parts of this, not so much with others. M sometimes got a cheeseburger, sometimes little fried potato faces, once she got a hot dog. She also had a bag of prawn crisps, a dessert, a carton of milk, a squeezy pouch of fruit puree, cheese and crackers , a bread roll – basically a lot of little choices from which you hope a child might find something to eat. Most of the choices were OK. The hot food – the burger, potato faces, the hot dog – were all to my mind a bit yuck. Jamie Oliver, where are you?

Drinks
Every seat gets a small bottle of water, and even in spite of this, flight attendants circulated with drinks (juice and water) in the middle of the night. We took our own water for our daughter and so between the three of us had plenty to keep us all hydrated. Of course there were the usual drinks with meals, including alcohol, although as that tends to dehydrate during air travel, we usually don’t bother with alcohol much.

Comfort
Legroom was fantastic – we had wanted initially to get the bulkhead because we had it with our baby last year and there was so much space. But actually I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I would.

Some legs of the journey the flight attendants very sensibly gave us a big plastic carry bag from their duty free and a box of tissues, to contain all the mess that travelling with a toddler generates. We used it and it worked very well for us. There is just so much debris, especially the plastic bags from the headphones.

The aircraft is reasonably new and there was not much noise from the aircraft to complain about.

Service
The flight attendants were very attentive and kind and polite, especially with our daughter.

Entertainment
Each seat has a personal screen, with a good selection of films in English. The program is slightly better between Seoul and Frankfurt than Sydney – Seoul, but not so different that it would be a pain. There is a modest selection of children’s cartoons or short films and movies (Pororo the penguin, who is known to us from Australian television but is actually a Korean cartoon, features heavily – we saw a Pororo game at the airport too).

On some legs we were given a drawstring bag of amusements for M. It contained 2 sheets of crazy animal stickers, a small colouring / activity book (crazy animal theme throughout), some small colour pencils, and a magnetic drawing board in the shape of a plane, quite a good quality toy. On another leg we were given a stuffed toy about 20cm high, a tiger that had Velcro arms holding a small polarfleece blanket for M. I was very impressed both with the quality and the amusement value of what they gave us.

We all had the usual handouts: headphones, pillow, blanket and a small pack of amenities (folded slippers, and a toothbrush and toothpaste).

Subsidised Stopovers
Something which could have been a big minus – no connecting flight from Seoul to Frankfurt – is actually the feature I liked best about this airline. We had been planning a stopover anyway, and because there is no connecting flight until the following day, the airline puts you up for free in a four or five-star hotel. They can’t tell you which hotel until you get there, but we were lucky enough to score the Hyatt Regency Incheon. (The airport is at Incheon, rather than Seoul proper and is a good ninety minutes by bus from Seoul, so all accommodation is in Incheon). There is a bus which takes all the airline passengers en masse and so you have to queue up at the hotel, but this is not burdensome. On the return leg there is a connecting flight so there is no subsidized stopover, but we wanted one anyway and so booked a hotel in Seoul and made the journey there ourselves. I won’t elaborate on that here as it’s not really pertinent to this topic. Just realize that the bus takes 90 minutes and you have to weigh up whether it’s worth it or not. I think many people would just hunker down in the hotel in Incheon and have a dip in the pool instead.

All meals during your stay are included – dinner and breakfast in the hotel, and you also get meal vouchers for a selection of restaurants and cafes in the airport for lunch before you board the plane. We found a restaurant with a smorgasbord that suited us very well and didn’t have to pay anything in the airport.

The Hotel (Our Experience)
The Hyatt Regency is fabulous. It has an amazing restaurant with several smorgasbord-style food stations where chefs are frying up heaven on a plate. There are both Asian and Western choices and even a dessert bar for the evening meal. The rooms are very comfortable and there is a choice of about 40 televisions stations (mostly English-language). You can make tea or coffee in the room, and one of the tea varieties is this yummy green tea with brown rice, a bit like the Japanese genmaicha, which you can get in big boxes at the airport. It was a hit with us.

Tipping
You might think of having a small amount of Korean won on you in the hotel. We had someone help us bring up our many bags (we were travelling for a month and had a lot of baggage) and although we are not particularly accustomed to paying a tip, as Australians don’t do it much, it was pretty clear to me that the bellboy was hovering so that we would pay him. I only had A$10, and as excessive as that was to give him, we had nothing else. On our return journey we didn’t have the same experience, so not sure how widespread this is.

Jetlag
Basically when we arrived in Frankfurt at 5:45pm we were like zombies, even though we had slept on the plane. We had a hotel room at the Steigenberger Airport Hotel in Frankfurt because we had a flight to Vienna the next day, and were in bed pretty soon after getting there. I am really happier on airlines that arrive in Frankfurt at 6am, coming from South East Asia. For the next few nights I was in bed not long after my daughter, and was a bit unhappy that it took me so long to adjust, as I don’t normally have this.

Questions
That’s just about it – any questions, feel free to ask. I would travel with Korean again gladly, the only sticking point for me being the jetlag. But Korean Air is now in my mind a serious competitor with Singapore Airlines.

Nice report.

I've flown KAL from US to Korea and agree about the quality of the airline. From the US to points elsewhere in Asia they are very competitive and I would not hesitate to connect through ICN. I didn't know about the subsidized layover - interesting idea.

great report KAL just got ranked in the top 10 on yahoo travel

WAY ahead of all the US carriers always enjoy my flights there.

airlinequality.com is more looked at by fliers lots of good

recent reviews there might file an andendum to your adendums

there for more giveback.

gotta give airasia.com best fare prize Oz to Europe if budget

That was a really comprehensive report! Where it you get your air travel deal? As I'm planning to go to Europe as well with a toddler.

Thanks for the compliment. We got our airfares from Flight Centre that time. Can't remember the exact price but in the $1600s, and saved several hundred dollars on an airfare with Lufthansa, Qantas or Singapore. We have travelled with Lufti/Qantas with our daughter before and both airlines were good with kids, Lufthansa a little more so than Qantas. But the price and the space on Korean are really hard to beat.

Lavandula

Lavendula - thanks for your informative report. Korean is on my radar as is Asiana which gets excellent reports and has a similar outward stopover.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/letters-top-service-in-business-class-at-half-price-20110930-1l148.html

Oops, Lavandula, sorry. And don't know whether Asiana still routinely offers the highly competitive economy fares it did a while back.

Hi Farrermog,

Thanks for the link - I would consider Asiana now after my very positive experience with Korean, although it might be some time before we do that route again. Our next trip is with United to San Antonio!

Lavandula