I have flown 842 times. In that time, one child has kept me irritated for an entire flight. As he bounced up and down the seats with his oblivious mother staring at her video screen, an exasperated fellow passenger asked if she had brought anything for her child to do. She looked up and shrugged her shoulders, saying “No” and went back to watching  her screen. A few babies have disturbed my takeoffs and landings but not enough for me to want children removed from my aeroplane. Most I have met on board have been well behaved or in awe or both. On the other hand, adult passengers that talk loudly on night flights, recline their seats, pack the luggage racks badly, keep the light on on night flights, abuse the flight attendants, dirty the lavatories, or step on my feet when walking across the emergency exits, annoy me more. Besides, for the first 15 flights of my life,  I was a child under 12.

So I was very interested in Malaysian Airline’s announcement  last Wednesday that children and infants under the age of 12 will be banned from the upper decks of their new Airbus A380 as well as the plane’s First Class.

The announcement overshadowed almost every other detail of the new Airbus services. The first plane due for delivery in June will start flying Kuala Lumpur daily into London in July. The second one will double the London capacity. KL- Sydney will follow from 25 September, 2012 as flights MH123/122 replacing the Boeing 747-400 aircraft currently serving the route. This means four airlines will be flying A380s into Sydney  and four into London (Emirates, Qantas, Singapore currently operate the plane at those two airports).

The Malaysian A380  has a brand new livery of blue and metal colours (pictured). No decision has been made as to whether the colours will be rolled out to the whole fleet. I really like the livery. The colour represents a new era as they join One World and fight to keep their five star Skytrax rating which is “under review”. (If Skytrax downgrades them, then that means with the loss of Kingfisher’s status, there will be five carrying the 5 star moniker compared with seven last year).

Malaysian’s Airbus A380 will have 494 seats compared with:

• Korean: 407  (my report here)
• Qantas: 450 (not reviewed)
• Singapore: 409/471 (not reviewed)
• Emirates: 489/517 (Three airlines A380s compared)
• China Southern: 506 (not flown yet)
• Air France: 516/538 (Reviewed January, 2012)
• Lufthansa: 526 (Review posted October last year)

There was talk of having four classes with a seat count of 503. Instead, Malaysian has dropped premium Economy and  increased the business cabin on the upper deck.  Seven of the seats are reserved for crew giving the plane 487 seats. 420 of these seats are economy, Business and First Class. On the lower deck are 350 Economy seats and the  eight kid free First class seats. The child proofed upper deck will have 66 Business and 70 economy seats.

First-class pitch will be 85 inches. The seats will flatten out to a full 87-inches. In flight entertainment screens are  23-inch. Business class: 74-inch pitch and full flat bed seats each measuring 72 inches in length  with individual 17-inch IFE screens. Economy-class seats will have a 32 inch pitch and an 18 inch seat width with 10.6-inch individual screens. Every seat on board will have a USB port.  AC electrical outlets Ports will be installed at every Business and First seat and shared with every two seats in Economy.

Now for the child ban. Malaysian have instructed travel agents that their booking system will not allow passengers under 12 in First class, or the upper deck. This is hot on the heels of a 2010 US survey identified that nearly 60% of travellers want airlines to create a family-only section on flights. This was a consequence of a confidential settlement between Qantas and a 67-year-old American passenger who sued the airline after a 3-year-old screamed on her flight. Further,  most  survey respondents said they wished to sit as far away from young children as possible. Those who support banning kids, point out that the chance of a small child or baby being disruptive is far greater than that of any other traveller. Those against point out that children likely to fly Business are usually behaved. plus it means all parents seeking to fly Malaysian will have to fly Economy.

So is this policy Wacky or Wise.? What do you think?

Korean Airnow has four Airbus A380s as of last Thursday.The newest A380 will undergo the usual tests and will start flying from Seoul/Incheon to Paris ( Mon, Wed, Fri) from 26 September until 29 October and to Los Angeles (every Tue, Thu, Sat) from 10 October 2011.I plan to fly the Seoul-Lax route in November. Anyone want to join me?

The long anticipated first flight of Korean Air’s A380 took place last week. The sixth airline in the world to fly the plane after Singapore, Qantas, Emirates, Air France and Lufthansa, the first flights were from Seoul (ICN) to Tokyo and Hong Kong

Korean have ordered ten A380s. Five will be delivered this year and the next five not until 2014.   They have configured the plane to have the least number of seats of all the airlines flying it (414) with the top deck being all business class with 94 seats. The lower deck has 12 First Class and 308 economy seats.

Korean Air’s next routes will be:

• Seoul- Bangkok (July)
• Seoul- New York (August)
• Seoul-Paris (September)
• Seoul- Los Angeles (October) which is when I plan to fly with them!

Korean Air took delivery of its first A380. The only 380 in the world to feature all business class upstairs, a duty free lounge and an in-flight luxury lounge for business and First customers with bar, sofas and TV.

 Their pilots are getting assessed. The Korean government aviation authority will approve the massive plane and then the sixth airline in the world will start flying between  Seoul-Incheon and Tokyo-Narita on June 17. Flights to USA and Europe will follow.

I hope to fly Korean’s A380 in October. That will be my fourth airline A380 experience. I have flown Emirates, Qantas and Singapore. I compared my experiences on those airlines in this post. Yet to do Lufthansa and Air France’s versions. Will aim for November for those services to catch up.

Check out the Korean A380 website for lots of pictures and graphics.

The Korean Air 380 launch has been delayed from 10 June, 2011 to 17 June, 2011 (perhaps to put in the duty free stores I mentioned yesterday?)
In the meantime, here is an advertisement for the Korean A380…..
I wrote a post on the layout of the Korean A380 and another comparing my Emirates A380 experience with that on Qantas and Singapore.

In 2009, Korean Air foreshadowed it would be installing duty free stores on its ten new A380s. The airline is already the number one airline company in the world for in flight retailing! 

Now they have revealed the store layout. It will be located at the back of the lower deck near the rear stairs. 

The store will replace 13 economy seats. The Korean A380 will have the lowest number of seats on board out of all of the airlines flying it (see my previous Blog post on the Korean A380).

The duty free “store” is made up of five units:

1. Video wall- video advertising space will be sold to companies
2. Fragrances
3. Jewellery
4. Liquor Unit
5. Liquor Unit

One cabin crew member will staff the shop and deliver bought goods. First Class passengers will be invited first. Then Business class passengers will be welcomed and only if there is time, economy class passengers will be welcomed. The goods on display are high priced products.

For a video about the units see here. 

Blog readers will know that I love the A380 SuperJumbo currently in service with 5 airlines:

• Air France
• Emirates (I flew their A380 in 2010 and loved it)
• Lufthansa (hope to fly this in July)
• Qantas (see the blog post about my  2010 fabulous A380 flight)
• Singapore Airlines (flown 2010)

Photo Credit David Barrie

Showing its colours at Toulouse is the Airbus A380 belonging to the sixth airline to have it,  Korean Air Lines. This is a company that I have never flown because of their dubious safety record (wikipedia: Korean Air had a relatively high accident rate between 1970 and 1999, during which time it wrote off 16 aircraft in serious incidents and accidents with the loss of 700 lives). Korean Air is a founding partner airline of SkyTeam, the world’s second largest airline alliance along with Air France-KLM and Delta. It is one of only nine airlines to fly to every inhabited continent.

Korean will start flying A380s in May, 2011 to Japan and East Asia. This will be followed by Korean’s US and European routes in August, 2011. Korean Air have said they will have five A380s by the end of 2011 and then another five from 2012 to 2014

 Korean Air’s A380 will only have 407 seats in total on board. This is the least number of seats out of all the airlines (Qantas 450, Singapore 471, Emirates 489/517, Air France 516/538, Lufthansa 526).

Of those seats Korean will have 12 KOSMO First Class seats and 301 economy seats on the lower deck. On the upper deck will be 94 Prestige (Business class seats) which will have to be a very spacious affair. No other carrier has done this.

China Southern will also add A380s in 2011 with Thai, Malaysian and Qatar flying them in 2012