เจแปนแอร์ไลน์ flights from St. Louis to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport (STL - BKK)

Excellent JAL!!

Seat are large and wide, as expected in premium economy. The shell seat makes reclining non-intrusive to others, it also eats in your own space but I find this a non issue due to the tremendous leg room (42”, even better than all other premium economy that I know of), be careful of the sliding mechanism as I nearly got stuff stuck inside, the seat belt is the airbag type, it also attaches to the shell so when you recline you have to loosen it. The seat itself is hard and the headrest is too high to support my neck, so expect to need lots of pillows to make yourself comfortable. Foot storage is ok and there is a gap to store more things between seats and between the seat and the window for window seats, which I find surprisingly useful. Footrest is too high and makes your legs hang above the legrest (good for them to include that too) so I didn’t use the foot rest. Lunch was supposedly a highlight but I find the sea food rice bland and there isn’t really much seafood to speak of. The small biscuit in the side dish is wet and disgusting. Cold spaghetti as a side dish is also weird. The breakfast served before landing was great, they call it “chewing” salmon and millet short pasta, and perfectly coincides the sunrise which makes for a amazing experience. Attendants picked the trays way too late which makes me unable to go out for a walk as all our tables is full of empty trays. Both meals comes with plentiful choices of beverages and amazingly, metal cutlery. Rice crackers tasted great. Snacks in the economy class gallery have little choices. Japanese style high tech toilets look stylish but for part of the flight, the drainage in one of the sink didn’t work. Also, it seems like there is only 2 bathrooms in the business class cabin so sometimes they come to use our toilets, still largely enough for us though, if business passengers didn’t come 2 bathrooms for the 40 seats premium cabin would be great. In later part of the trip we were flying quite low (33000-35000ft) and is somewhat turbulent, it looked like there is no clouds much above us so I wonder if we could have avoided some turbulence by flying higher. Wi-Fi was slightly expensive unless you have a connecting flight (I do but the wifi is broken in the previous leg), speed was good. I got lounge access even on premium economy, which elevated the experience a LOT. They provided a amenity kit with ear plugs, moisture mask, eye mask, tooth brush and toothpaste which is great. Noise canceling headphones is also provided but the active noise canceling was barely noticeable. Overall the experience is either ok or great, only bad part was the first meal.

Boarding quick. Cabin crew very kind. Good movie options. My companion ordered the vegan meal ahead of time and it was very good. I opted out of meals so I could sleep, but they made me put my seat upright during the meals, so I couldn’t actually sleep through them anyway.