Trip review: Japan Airlines (JAL) Premium Economy seats (Tokyo–Haneda to Shanghai–Pudong) [HND to PVG]

On my recent flight from Tokyo–Haneda to Shanghai–Pudong, I rode on a Japan Airlines (JAL) Boeing 787-9. This is a three-class cabin with business class, premium economy, and economy seats. However, the flight was sold as a two-cabin flight; the premium economy seats were treated as regular economy class, but we got to enjoy the famous JAL premium economy seats.

I essentially got my pick of a premium economy seat with just an economy fare thanks to my oneworld Sapphire status. Pretty cool, right?

The premium economy seat

The premium economy seat is called Sky Premium.

Overall, it is a really nice seat for premium economy. Japan Airlines was quite innovative with their design of this seat. In fact, one could say their innovation might be a bit too avant garde for the average flyer. Most flyers are used to pressing the recline button and leaning back on their seat for the recline to work. However, that did not work with the Sky Premium seat, because there is a hard shell on the back that doesn’t move with reclining. Instead, I had to slide the base of the seat forward. To me, it felt a bit odd that the base of the seat (the part where your bottom rests) slides back and forth. This ends up compromising on legroom, especially the distance between the knee and the back side of the seat in front of you. That being said, it does let me lie down at an angle, which is better than the typical economy experience. Furthermore, there is a lot more legroom in these seats compared to a standard economy seat, which makes up for the fact that reclining/sliding the seat reduces the legroom.

The seat is not made of leather, but out of the mesh fabric that you’d find in a base model Toyota RAV4. It feels like the kind of mesh jersey that you’d wear in elementary school PE class, except instead of wearing it, you’re sitting on it.

Here in the above picture, you’re able to see the two seats side-by-side. The window seat has the provided headphones in the red bag.

The bottom of the seat forms the bottom part of the premium economy seat, which moves upwards to form a leg rest when you recline.

Near your head, you get a small separating barrier from your neighbor and a head lamp that serves as a reading light. You’re able to adjust the positioning of the lamp.

The tray table is stowed on the seat in front. To the left of this tray table are small nets to put things in. The one on top is for my seat, the aisle seat, while the one on the bottom is for the window seat. It was large enough for me to fit my provided headphones.

To give you an idea of just how big it is, .

Pardon the blurry photo, but the armchair partition is comprised of a small table on top with the remote embedded in the armrest below it. The button to recline the seat is also here. There’s a cubby between the mini-table and the back of the seat, with dimensions that make it useful for storing a laptop or books. The headphone jack is located inside the small cubby.

The seat’s reclining was very weird. If you lean back, nothing happens because there’s a hard shell behind you. Instead, you have to slide your bottom forwards. However, if you do that, you can barely use your footrest. Oh well.

That being said, the reclining seat was probably the best premium economy seat I’ve ever had the privilege of using. It was great for resting. I might prefer a lie-flat business class seat for a transpacific route, but for a quick hop from Japan to China, this was no biggie at all.

Entertainment and IFE

The provided screen was above the tray table and, just like the tray table, was pretty large. You can also see the tray table has a drink holder for whenever you don’t want it fully down. There’s also a coat “hook” to the right of it, which you can pull out and use to hang your coat.

Below the screen are various buttons to control the seat light, whether the screen was on or off, and the volume. You could also use the three buttons on the bottom right to open the menu, go to the home screen, or go back.

There’s also a USB-A port below the screen that you can use to charge your device.

However, that was about the end of the positives of this IFE system. While it was a touchscreen system, I found it finicky to use.

These are the headphones they provided us with, still wrapped in the bag.

After unwrapping them, they looked a lot better. While they were better than getting single-use earbuds, they were nothing special. They didn’t offer any noise cancelation and didn’t cup over my ears.

The movie and video collection was pretty bad for anyone who didn’t speak Japanese. For instance, they had Doraemon, but there weren’t any English subtitles. Everything was in Japanese. Also, because the touchscreen was finicky, I had to use the remote to control it.

At least the remote looked pretty full-featured. It lit up too!

Since I didn’t know any Japanese, this was no fun for me, so I had to stop watching. I went back to the collection and browsed for something else. I was excited to see some aviation videos that I could potentially watch to learn how to fly. This was particularly interesting to me, so I started by watching the first episode.

However, I ran into the same problem again. There weren’t any English subtitles, which meant I had to give up immediately on watching it. There was nothing I could do on this flight except monitor my flight’s status. What a shame.

International Wi-Fi service was available on board this flight, but I didn’t feel like using it, as it was pretty expensive. Interestingly, the prices were in USD. Also, the Wi-Fi was apparently not fast enough for streaming videos, which newer Wi-Fi systems in the U.S. are able to support.

Food

Soon after takeoff, we had our meal service. In typical Japanese fashion, we started with a packaged wet cloth with which we could wipe our hands.

Before wiping my hands, I had a look at the drinks menu. It was located in the JAL Skyward in-flight magazine, which was mainly in Japanese and therefore mostly useless. Anyway, for my drinks, I asked for water, the special JAL “Sky Time” peach + grape juice (which was… not great), and white wine.

Since this seat was sold as regular economy, the service I received (and the food I got) was also a regular economy class meal. It came with metal cutlery.

There was only one meal choice. Unless you ordered ahead, you better hope you’re okay with eating pork.

I was disappointed to see not-so-appetizing Italian-style thick noodles with green beans, carrots, and braised pork. The meal came with salad, a seafood + fruit medley, a pre-buttered bread roll, and balsamic vinaigrette in a tetrahedron container.

The not-so-appetizing main dish was indeed not very appetizing.

The bread roll was great, and I’m thankful it was pre-buttered. It still tasted pretty fresh. I’m sure they used preservatives, but whatever, the butter made it taste great.

Here’s the salad with the tetrahedron salad dressing on top.

And here’s the fruit + seafood medley, featuring some fruits, olives, prawns, and squid.

Last but not least, the most exciting part of this meal was easily the Haagen-Dazs ice cream!

It was a black tea milk tea tart flavor. If you’d never heard of this flavor before, it’s probably because it’s apparently a JAL exclusive flavor.

Overall, the food was worse than I expected. However, the onboard services were very good. The flight attendants were very attentive and were happy to serve me more drinks.

Lavatory

Mid-flight, I took a tour of the onboard facilities. This one was located between business class and premium economy.

I was impressed by the lavatory. This was a Boeing 787-9, so the lavatory resembled a typical 787 lavatory with all of the new fancy lavatory technologies, such as a touchless sensor-based flushing system and an automatically activating faucet. In typical Japanese fashion, it was very clean. The mirror also came with a makeup mirror, which is a nice touch that some other 787-9s don’t come with.

You’ll notice in the middle of the above picture there are some amenities available. There’s a fabric and air freshener, but the basket contains some goodies!

Lo and behold, a toothbrush kit and a small mouthwash packet! Perfect for brushing your teeth and being minty after a meal.

But arguably the coolest part of this toilet that no other country’s airline would include? That’s right. There’s a washlet on this toilet.

For those of you who are not familiar with Japanese bathrooms: in Japan, you’ll often find Toto Washlets, which are toilets and bidets combined into the same seat. They are very easy to use and comfortable for washing your bum after going for a Number 2.

While I did not try using it, I was pretty happy about this feature, and certainly would have appreciated it had I needed to use it.

Final thoughts

One section I did not include in this post was the service section. Make no mistake, the service was excellent. However, I don’t take pictures of flight attendants because I wish to respect their privacy. There’s also not much to take pictures of—however, I can reassure you that the flight attendants were courteous, attentive, and prompt.

The flight was overall good enough. It resembled what I expected out of JAL. The seat and service were amazing. The most disappointing aspects of the flight were the food and the IFE system. Not only was the selection not great for anyone who wasn’t Japanese, the technology was pretty broken.

Since I paid for a regular economy ticket and got to choose this seat for free by being a oneworld Sapphire elite member, I was already very happy with the experience. While I would recommend it for the future, I just hope that the food will be better on a real premium economy service in the JAL Sky Premium hard product. Also, I recommend bringing your own device for entertainment. I ended up watching Friends on my iPhone.