Asiana A380 Business Suite Surprise – worth the $100?!

Asiana A380 Business Suite Surprise – worth the $100?!

Konichiwa from Japan. It’s a big day. I have waited nearly 10 years to fly on this bad boy, the Asiana A380. Now, we’re doing it on a 2 and 1/2 hour flight from Tokyo to Seoul. I did a little surprise upgrade. We booked business class, but without Dave knowing, I snuck in there and upgraded us to the business suite. Now, this is the Old First Class, and they give you business class service. But look at the size of these suites. They’re absolutely enormous. There’s only 12 in the entire cabin. Everything is controlled with a touch panel, and we were beyond excited. Stick around as you watch me surprise Dave. We’ll go through getting to the airport, the lounge, the entire service on board, and let’s pick it up in Japan. All right, we are headed to Korea. Dig out the door. He doesn’t know, but we’re flying Asianity onto Soul. We’re heading over. We’re going to try and take the highspeed train, but he doesn’t know that I didn’t just book us business class, which is like 350 bucks for the flight. So, pretty cheap. I put us in the business studio suite, which means or the business suite. I think it’s just business suite. I’m going to throw it in studio. Anyways, he doesn’t know that I put us in that, which is their old first class monster seat. So, he just walked out. So, this is going to be a good surprise. I love a surprise. Okay, let’s go check it out. We’re headed over to the Tokyo station. Highspeed train. Let’s go. Dave, are you excited about checking out Asiana business? Oh, yes. After we get out to Narita. All right, we’re off trying to do the Narita Express. Going to try. We’re going to try. 10 to 15 minute walk from here. So, and then straight shot out of the bullet train. Um, all right. People are getting the elevator, so I’m going to hop off. Well, we’re not walking. It’ll be like 22 minutes and it was like this. So, we’re doing the easy one. How beautiful. All right, it’s express down to soul. [Music] Here [Music] [Applause] we are. Let’s go. [Music] Italia over there and the platform. Thank you very much. Very helpful. [Music] This has not been the easiest, most straightforward, but really if you just look at these red where it says to Narita Express on the ground and follow that like that’s the easiest. But and then just ask people because you can ask people and they’re very very helpful. But it is good. It’s good. So, if you’re wondering how much this costs, 20 bucks. The speed of the train gets up to 80 m hour and takes roughly 60 minutes from Tokyo station to Narita. Your bags are easily secured. You can punch in a code and lock them so you don’t even have to worry about them when you’re on the train. Now, if you were to compare this to an Uber, we clocked in an Uber at roughly an hour and a half from the Hyatt Centric Genza and $200. Made it to Narita Terminal One. And so now he’s got to hop off the train. We go upstairs, check in, and uh Dave has no idea. Ready, Dave? Let’s do it. We are all checked in and now we are headed through security and because we’re in business, we got the gold track. So Starlines has a fast track for business first and then elite status. So we’re going to slide through there and then we’ll see you in the lounge. We’re going to go to the ANA lounge. Should be pretty nice. Dave Dave has no idea. No idea. He won’t know until we get on the plane. And even then, I don’t think that he’ll know because he’ll be like, “Oh my god, this business class is so nice.” It’s cuz it’s cuz it’s first. It’s first. Oh, here we are. [Music] Also, doesn’t know the A3A. Now, if you wanted the full business suite experience, it would be best to do this out of Soul because there’s a special business suite lounge. But here we are in Tokyo Narita. So, we got to check out the ANA flagship business class lounge, which as you can see is very, very nice. There’s ample places to sit. You can actually order food just with a QR code. But what I would have to say is you should definitely hit up the noodle bar. It sits as Dave and I did with a nice view of the runway. These noodles were absolutely exceptional. I would highly recommend getting them. I could have had two or three bowls, but I wanted to see how the food would be once we actually got on Asiana. Now, if you need a shower, there is a shower suite that you can make a reservation for. There’s actually a little machine you go over, you put your boarding pass in, and then they’ll give you a text or they’ll notify you when your shower suite is available. Our flight was a little bit delayed, so we decided to go check out another partner lounge, the Turkish Airlines Lounge. Now, you can see that this is a little bit more basic of a lounge. ANA’s home airport is Narita, so that lounge is going to be much nicer versus Turkish. This is just, you know, if we were in Istanbul, this would be a much nicer lounge than the ANA lounge. Always look to see what lounges you have access to and find which the home airport is and go to that lounge. It’s about time to board. Let’s take a look at that A380 and pop downstairs. Here we go. The moment of truth. Dave has no idea. None. None. [Music] Here we go, D. [Music] It’s a special lucky. Is it? Yeah. It’s uh It’s called the business suite. Business suite. And so this is classes upstairs and Hannah did away with first class and so it’s like a special upgrade and you can do this. It’s like this is class service but it’s in their first class suite. So this is they used to they don’t do it anymore but it’s like they offer this on like the big international routes and everything and I’ve always wanted to do it and when it opened up I was like oh dude we have to do it. I have always wanted to go to Korea and I’ve always wanted to fly this Asiana first class product which is now the business suites. Look at the sheer size of these suites. I could not be more excited and I just love a good surprise. Let’s take a quick little seat tour. You can see it comes complete with a closet, loads and loads and loads of storage. There’s one cabinet there. If we open that up, we can actually see that this is where your tray table comes out for dining. And if you did choose to do this, there’s actually a seat belt so you can do buddy dining as well. Got another place for storage right back there, as well as a places where you could plug in a phone. The cabin is very open. As you can see, there’s no overhead bins. They actually collected my roller when I got onto the plane and stored it in the front. It’s funny, they don’t have it say business suit. It still says first suite, which could be confusing if you’re sitting in here and you’re expecting to actually be served something that is differentiated from the normal business class. The business class is upstairs on the A380. And the experience is going to be pretty much the same just in a bigger seat. You’re not going to get elevated champagne. You’re not going to get caviar service. These are things that Asiana used to provide if you flew in this cabin, but no longer. What you’re going to get is just a ton more space. You’re going to get the private suites. you’re going to have only 12 people in the cabin. So, it’s going to be significantly quieter. On the longhaul flights, I think if that is within your budget to splurge and spend a little bit more and you’re trying to get extra rest or maybe you don’t want to get sick, there’s not as many people, I would probably pull the trigger. The cabin feels a little bit dated. It reminds me a lot of Etsy’s old trip 7 first class with the doors, with the instrumentation panels, with the if it really reminds me of that. But you do get a lot more space. You get a lot more privacy. And it’s up to you whether you think it’s worth the money. I would be very tempted to pull the trigger. So, is this necessary for a two 2 and 1 half hour flight? Absolutely not. Is it amazing? Yes. I mean, look at this. In terms of cost, uh the base flight that we had for one way in business class was around 3 to 350 and then when I joined Asian I got 10% off and then for this upgrade itself was I think it was a little over a hundred bucks. It just depends on how far the flight is uh the route that you’re flying etc etc in terms of what the cost is going to be. If I was flying this from LA or San Francisco or somewhere on the west coast of the US to Seoul on the direct flight, I mean, this is amazing how much space you have. It doesn’t really all the extra frills and everything. You’re really would be paying for the space. So, uh I don’t know what those go for on a everyday basis to fly in the business suite, but this is something I’ve wanted to do for a really long time. My first time flying um Asiana, and it’s fantastic. Everything’s been very, very lovely. The food was just fine. I mean, I wasn’t really hungry to begin with cuz I had noodles uh in the bar, which were delicious at the ANA lounge there at um Tokyo’s Narita, but the food is just okay. And I wasn’t really that hungry anyways. But you can see cool experience. A380. It’s wild that you can do this on a two 2 and 1/2 hour flight. And if you’re doing a special occasion or it’s a fun trip like we’re doing right now, it’s just worth I mean for 100 bucks to be able to fly like this on your business class would be really really nice. You fly economy for two hours. I mean, you don’t even need you don’t need any of this, but all in to be somewhere like the 450 range, I think. Not bad. Not a huge splurge and super fun. So, follow along. We’ll be in Seoul. We’re going to be at the Park Hyatt in Seoul. So, take a look at that and all the fun things to do in Soul to Korea. So, it’s first time. Thank you. And make sure that you know like, subscribe, follow along for tips, tricks, points, miles. This is what I love to do. And yeah, thank you so much. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Very nice. Now into the city. [Music] [Music]

I absolutely love surprises AND have always wanted to fly in Asiana’s old first class, now referred to as the Business Suite, so when it was available for about $100 to $150 as an upgrade, I pulled the trigger and didn’t tell my buddy.

Come along on this surprise journey and full review of our Asiana A380 Business Suite flight from Tokyo to Seoul Korea.

This is a part of our buddy trip around Asia where we were blessed enough to fly the following incredible cabins.

British Airways Club Suites to London
Japan Airlines First Class A350-1000 London to Tokyo
Asiana Business Suites A380-800 from Tokyo to Seoul
Singapore Airlines Business Class 787-10 Seoul to Singapore
Singapore Suites A380-800 Singapore to Mumbai
Emirates Business Class A350-900 Mumbai to Dubai
Emirates First Class Suites A380-800 Dubai to Toronto