After another successful journey to Japan for a week of trains and fantastic dining — in what has become something of an annual tradition for me — I was excited to fly home to New York on Japan Airlines’ Airbus A350-1000.
Having sampled the carrier’s well-aged first class product aboard the Boeing 777-300ER in 2023, I had high expectations for the brand new A350-1000, despite being in economy class this time around.
While JAL’s new hard product has made clear generational leaps in first and business, its changes in economy are much more incremental, as is typically the case in this class of travel. There are obviously no privacy doors or headphone-free listening to the entertainment system.
What JAL economy passengers do get is a comfortable seat with a generous pitch of about 33 inches, a comfort factor for which the airline is famous.
I was most excited to sample was the 13-inch Panasonic Avionics inflight entertainment display with 4K resolution. Unfortunately, my experience with the IFE turned out to be the biggest letdown of the flight.
After boarding, I paired my phone to the screen and loaded up the JAL iOS app. So far, so good.
This allowed me to browse the entire library of available movies and favorite them for later playback, a feature I really appreciated.
However, I noticed that just one of the movies I had favorited actually appeared on the seatback screen. When I tried initiating playback of the missing titles from my phone, the screen presented an error message.
The bulk of the content was older Disney properties that I had no interest in watching. The TV show selection was also grim, with few titles of interest to me, and most had as few as just one or three episodes a piece instead of entire seasons.
With all of the real-time analytics and data reporting of modern entertainment systems, I was extremely disappointed that this issue could go unnoticed and wondered how long it was happening.
I was also disappointed by the presentation of the few available titles to passengers.
Movies were listed multiple times — driven, perhaps, by an interest in highlighting movies with language support or captions — but this format led to clutter which made browsing difficult. Workarounds like this shouldn’t be necessary on such a modern system.
I noticed that several titles also had subtitles burned into the content. While this approach ensures a more accessible experience for passengers with hearing impairments, alas I could not turn it off. I did test the Bluetooth audio functionality briefly and experienced no issues.
Lastly, any time a passenger seeks to stop playback of content the system presents a “resume code” so they can resume playback of that content from the place they left off. I found the presentation of this option to be confusing and especially unnecessary for a user like me who had taken the time to sync the screen to my device and account.
Passengers aren’t going to write down an eight digit resume code like they’re playing a Nintendo game in 1985.
Wi-Fi provided by Panasonic was also available, offering one hour of free access for all passengers but without any option for a lower cost, full-flight messaging-only plan that has become so common elsewhere. The free hour functioned well for social media, though streaming video was blocked.
One of my biggest gripes with JAL economy was the lackluster and frankly confusing catering I experienced out of New York in 2023. Thankfully, I can report that the situation is much improved, at least out of Tokyo Haneda.
Both the Japanese option of a “hamburger” and western option of chicken were quite good.
I appreciated the thoughtful printed menu with ingredient lists and photo representation of the dishes, though seeing the menu before ordering would be much more helpful than receiving it alongside the meal!
A “beef ribs bulgogi & mayo” bun was served at the midpoint of the flight, but in the most disruptive way possible.
Despite all the advances in aircraft cabin lighting and science behind its jet lag-fighting abilities, the crew on this flight did not use the LEDs to their advantage.
Instead, the cabin went from dark to full white brightness in an instant, with the snack served cold in a crinkly plastic wrap. The pre-arrival meal was thankfully much better, served in a nice takeout-style box on a proper tray.
Overall the experience aboard JAL’s A350-1000 was mostly positive, especially when focusing on the comfortable seat, improved catering, and stellar crew. The entertainment system issues were a major letdown, though. It made a long flight feel longer than it really was.
Though the bones of a really great experience are all there for JAL deliver, I arrived feeling a bit disappointed once again.
All images credited to the author, Jason Rabinowitz
