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Saturday 23 August 2014

ANA All Nippon Airways

So I've taken ANA this entire trip from Singapore to Japan and then Japan to USA and back again. Here are my impressions on them which rank them below most other major airlines I've taken but above Air China. 

Let's split this into several sections for easier reading. 

Seats

The seats are fairly normal in the planes I've taken. Except for that one plane from Singapore-Japan where the seats don't really lean back but instead the seat bottom moves forward instead so you have the illusion of leaning backwards when you don't really have the luxury of leaning backwards. That's just wtf. 


Service

As far as service goes, ANA is kind of average in terms of that. They're not really bad at it but they're not the best either. Their stewardesses do not go around offering water or other drinks often enough. Yes, I could press the 'call' button but you can do that on ANY airline which is why I'm not using that as a baseline. Also, another thing is that for some reason, instant noodles are reserved as a 'quick snacks' for PREMIER economy passengers. Let's think about that for a moment. A 100yen snack is not provided for people who take the normal economy class but only for those who take PREMIER economy. Seriously, wth. Granted, it's their prerogative to decide which class gets what but it's a 100 yen snack and almost all other asian airlines I've taken have provided instant noodles as an instant snack for normal economy classes. 

Food
Sadly,this is one of the worst foods I've tasted on an airplane. It's like ANA is still stuck in the 80s in terms of how food goes. To put it simply, Air Asiana; which is a Korean airline and also a member of Star Alliance, has much better food than ANA. In reality, the only proper airline that I've taken that has worse food than ANA is Air China and that's a China airline -_-. 

Communication
There is really no good way to say this but considering ANA is an international player, they should consider hiring more people who can speak basic/proper english on their flights. Even when the pilot is giving announcements over the intercom, half the time you can't understand what he's saying because it's either a) very mangled english or he's b)got a really bad accent. Seriously, how the hell does an airline that's decades old and had decades of experience performing international flights; especially from the Japan-US sector, have such bad english speakers??? This gets worse when they're trying to explain something to you and you have no idea what they're saying because they're not speaking proper english. For example, they were trying to tell me something had happened to my check-in bag and I had to do something but I really couldn't understand them. 

Entertainment
Okay, on the plus point, it has a video on demand entertainment system which lets you choose what you want to watch when you want to watch. Otoh, it has the SMALLEST VOD catalog I've seen. Under their TV shows, it's really just 1 episode for each TV show. For example, Castle only had 1 episode and it was the first season pilot. Same for Big Bang Theory, NCIS, Criminal minds etc. What's with that? 

Overall, it's a passable airline just not really as good as I thought it would be. 

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