Korean Air 787-10 Business Class Review (Prestige Class)
Airline: Korean Air, KE
Aircraft: Boeing 787-10
Aircraft Registration: HL8572
Route: Seoul Incheon Airport - Dubai International Airport
Flight Number: KE951
Seat: 14B
A year ago, the chairman of Korean Air stood in front of a thousand people and made a promise that felt almost out of character for an airline that has spent decades being, if I'm honest, a little invisible on the world stage. He said Korean Air wanted to become the best airline in the world within a few years, and he named names: Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, Emirates, and closer to home, EVA Air, ANA, and Japan Airlines. That's a lot of ambition! Can Korean Air deliver on that? Let’s find out!
I hadn't flown Korean Air since before the pandemic, and certainly not since this transformation began, so I went in with high expectations and a healthy amount of curiosity. This is what ten hours on their newest business class product, from Seoul to Dubai, actually looked like.
korean Air business Class Check-In and Lounge
Our check-in and security at Incheon were smooth, and walking through Terminal 2 afterward was almost surreal. The terminal was packed with people, yet somehow it felt quiet and calm, which isn't something I can say about most major hubs.
We had arrived four and a half hours before departure, which is unusually early for us unless we're connecting through on a longer itinerary. But Incheon is a pleasant place to spend time, and Korean Air recently renovated its lounges here, so we decided to hop between all three.
Korean Air lounge invitation card
Korean Air lounge invitation card
First up was the Prestige Garden West Lounge, tucked into the new terminal extension. It was packed, which felt strange given how empty the terminal outside was, but the design made up for the crowding.
Korean Air Lounge Prestige West lounge bar
Multiple seating areas, good natural light, and a thoughtful touch: jazz music playing softly in the background instead of the usual dead silence.
Korean Air Lounge Prestige West lounge
Korean Air Lounge Prestige West lounge
Korean Air Lounge Prestige West lounge buffet
Korean Air Lounge Prestige West lounge buffet
The food was the highlight. Alongside a Western breakfast spread, there was a build-your-own bibimbap station and two styles of gimbap. I put together a meat-free bowl that was easily one of the better lounge meals I've had.
Korean Air Lounge Prestige West lounge kimbap
Korean Air Lounge Prestige West lounge pastries
Next was the Prestige Lounge East Left, which has to be one of the most confusingly named lounges I've encountered, since at the Prestige Lounge East you have one lounge on your left and another on your right.
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left
This one opened in January and has a truly fun feature: a ramen library, where you pick your instant ramen from a vending machine, prepare it convenience-store style, and choose your own toppings.
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left ramyun library
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left ramyun
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left ramyun side dishes
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left buffet
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left buffet
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left buffet
There's also an arcade with games for kids and adults, a photo booth, and a chocolate-making session for kids at what they call the Atelier.
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left arcade games
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left claw machines
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left arcade games
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left photo booth
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left photo booth
The lounge has no natural light, which is its main drawback, but the bathrooms are worth mentioning on their own. They're done in the Japanese style, and after a long day of travel, that's a small luxury that goes a long way.
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left Japanese toilet
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Left Japanese toilet
Last was the Prestige Lounge East Right, the largest of the three, with the biggest food selection built around a live cooking and soup station. If you want ramen, though, the left lounge is the better bet.
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Right
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Right
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Right
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Right live noodle cooking
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Right noodle bar toppings
There's also a relaxation area with massage chairs, though every one was occupied when we passed through.
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Right machines
Korean Air Prestige Lounge East Right wellness room signage
All three lounges were crowded and all three had good food, just with different strengths. If I were doing it again, I'd start at the East Right lounge for the food, then move to one of the garden lounges, East or West, since those are brighter and more pleasant places to actually sit and wait.
Korean air Business Class Cabin and Seats
We boarded just 35 minutes before departure, faster than most Western airlines board a narrow body. I'd already seen this seat once before, at the launch event in Seoul, but walking on board again still got a reaction out of me.
Korean Air business class cabin logo
The cabin is stunning: high-end finishes, a rich color palette, and a level of polish that immediately set it apart. I'd flown Delta One on their A350 the day before, and the contrast was stark. This felt like a completely different tier of cabin design.
Korean Air business class cabin seats
Korean Air business class cabin seats
The layout has a quirk worth knowing about. The center seats split into "honeymoon" pairs, which are great if you're traveling together, and standalone center seats that are, frankly, everyone's last choice. The window seats sit closer to the windows with more separation from the aisle and better outward views.
Korean Air business class cabin seats
Korean Air business class cabin
From there, I took a tour of the seat itself. There's a large side storage compartment for headphones, a big mirror, and a remote I never really needed.
Korean Air business class seat 12A
Korean Air business class storage compartment
Korean Air business class headphones
Below that are two USB-C ports, wireless charging, and an AC power outlet.
Korean Air business class USB ports
Korean Air business class power outlet
The video monitor and tray table are both generously sized, and the tray table is designed so you can still get out of the seat while it's deployed.
Korean Air business class tray table
Korean Air business class tray table
Here's an admission that might get me some pushback from other aviation nerds: I've started to prefer the seats set back from the window over the true window seats, at least when privacy is this good. This layout gives you a real floor space to store a carry-on bag during the flight, and because you truly can't see anyone else from inside the suite, it's the closest thing I've experienced to Qatar's Qsuite in terms of privacy, similar to a seat I flew on Air India. It's easily my favorite Dreamliner business class seat so far.
Korean Air business class seat 12A
Korean Air business class seat features
The bedding is soft and well-padded, easily one of the better mattress setups I've tried in business class.
Korean Air business class seat 12A
Korean Air business class seat 12A
Korean Air business class bed
My main complaint is that your legs extend quite far under the seat in front of you, so there's not a lot of room to shift around once you're lying down. The seat itself felt wide, possibly even wider than the true window seats based on what I'd seen described elsewhere.
Korean Air business class footwell
The bigger issue for sleep turned out to be temperature. There are no individual air vents, and the cabin runs warm. I got a better night's sleep than expected given that, but I did wake up more than once to the seatbelt sign cycling on and off, each time triggering a full cabin announcement.
Korean Air business class no individual air vents
The entertainment system, new along with the rest of the aircraft, supports Bluetooth audio so you can pair your own headphones. The movie selection is strong, and I was glad to find one of my favorite films available.
Korean Air business class entertainment screen
Onboard Wi-Fi is currently available only on the 787-10s and A321neos ahead of a fleet-wide Starlink rollout. It's a paid service, and I picked up a two-hour pass. The speed test came back slow, but in practice it felt perfectly usable.
Korean Air business class starlink wifi
korean air Business Class Inflight Meal Experience
My pre-departure starts with a drink: guava juice, chosen from a short list that also included champagne.
Korean Air business class pre departure drink
The Prestige class menu doesn't offer a choice of appetizer, but there are four main course options, listed without any real description, so it helps to know roughly what you're ordering.
Korean Air business class inflight menu
Korean Air business class inflight menu
Korean Air business class inflight menu
Korean Air business class inflight menu
Korean Air business class inflight menu
The second meal opens with a salad and a choice of three dishes. Drinks include a respectable champagne, a range of wines, and other alcohol, though nothing that felt distinctly Korean. On the non-alcoholic side, there were a few interesting teas and coffee.
Meal service started fast. Hot towels came out just 20 minutes after takeoff, and 30 minutes in, the amuse-bouche arrived, catered specifically to match my pre-ordered special meal. That's rare to see even in first class, let alone business class. The flavors were built around ginger, something fruity and it was a strong opening to the meal.
Korean Air business class pre ordered special meal
Fifteen minutes later, my starter landed on the tray, and it was one of the more striking presentations I've had on a plane. I'd pre-ordered a vegan Korean special meal, and as far as I know, Korean Air is the only airline that offers a regionally specific special meal like this. The dish was clearly hand-rolled rather than assembled or dispensed, and that extra effort showed.
Korean Air business class vegan Korean special meal
The main course arrived as a full spread: miso soup, a generous set of banchan side dishes, and a main built around seaweed rice wrapped in lettuce. It was fragrant, savory, and had a nice kick of spice, easily one of the better in-flight meals I've had.
Korean Air business class main course
.The only letdown was dessert, which was just fruit.
Korean Air business class dessert
Ahead of the second meal service, I ordered peppermint tea and a snack.
Korean Air business class snack and tea
Crew came through with pre-poured drinks already on their trays, something I don't think I've seen paired with a business class meal service before. The meal opened with a salad that looked unassuming but had a remarkably excellent dressing, a reminder that presentation and flavor don't always match in Asian catering.
Korean Air business class appetizer
The main course followed, and for other passengers it looked closer to a standard tray presentation, but my special meal again stood apart, even if I couldn't quite identify everything on the plate. Part of the side dishes included plain cabbage leaves, which turned out to be for making your own cabbage rolls.
Korean Air business class main course
Dessert was fruit again, which felt like a repeat of the earlier letdown, especially given how much Korean fruit is treated as a delicacy back home.
Korean Air business class dessert
korean Air business Class Amenity Kit and Lavatory
The amenity kit was a pleasant surprise, with noticeably good skincare products, though it was a little odd that a Korean airline's kit didn't lean more into Korean skincare brands specifically.
Korean Air business class amenity kit pouch
Korean Air business class amenity kit
The slippers were remarkably cozy and fit even larger feet comfortably. I tried the eau de toilette inside, and it smelled good right up until it started making me sneeze.
Korean Air business class slippers
The lavatories stayed spotless throughout the flight, including a particularly spacious one in the center of the cabin.
Korean Air business class lavatory sink
Korean Air business class lavatory amenities
One small but appreciated detail: the toilet paper on board is three-ply, which is a rare and oddly satisfying thing to notice on a long-haul flight.
Korean Air business class three ply toilet paper
is korean Air Business Class Service is good?
Here's where the flight's biggest flaw shows up, and it isn't the crew's fault so much as how they've been trained. Everyone I interacted with was friendly, cheerful, and polished, but the service is rigidly built around scheduled rounds with almost no flexibility outside of them. If there's trash at your seat, it won't get collected until the next designated pass. If you ask a crew member to take something, you're told to wait. If you want a drink outside of drink service, that's also not really an option.
It felt like being served by a very polite chatbot: helpful within its script, but unable to improvise. Given how naturally hospitable Korean hospitality can be, this feels like the clearest, most fixable gap between Korean Air and the airlines it's trying to compete with, like Singapore Airlines.
That said, when the crew was doing exactly what they were trained to do, the results were consistently good, as reflected in the spotless lavatories and generally attentive meal service. Service wrapped up with a farewell at our seats from the crew that felt oddly warm and personal, a contrast to the more rigid service flow earlier in the flight.
Korean air overall Impressions
Korean Air business class sunset wing view
Later this year, Korean Air will fully absorb Asiana, and that brand will disappear entirely, creating one of the largest international airlines in the world. It's an exciting move, but not without challenges. Korean Air already has an inconsistent hard product, and folding in Asiana's aircraft means even more seat types to manage and standardize, which isn't a cheap problem to fix. There's also an aging fleet of 777s and A330s that will need retiring or reconfiguring at some point.
On the other hand, Korean Air is highly profitable, will be the only full-service carrier based in Seoul, has a thoroughly modern hub in Incheon, relatively low costs, and a combined fleet that skews modern. There's also a wealth of Korean culture the airline could draw on to build a more distinct identity, something it has started doing but could push much further. Even the safety video, an oddly styled animated one, felt like a missed opportunity to showcase more of that culture.
There's a lot to like about Korean Air's newest business class product. The cabin is comfortable and visually one of the best I've flown, the catering was consistently good, and the vegan Korean pre-order meal is a feature I haven't seen matched anywhere else. The amenities, entertainment, and lounge experience all held up their end as well.
The one thing that really stands out as a problem is the crew training. It's not a question of attitude or effort, since everyone was pleasant throughout, but the rigid, task-by-task structure of the service holds the experience back from matching the airlines Korean Air says it wants to compete with. If that gets fixed, and it seems fixable, Korean Air has clearly built the hardware to be a serious contender among the world's best. I'm already looking forward to flying them again.
