Category Archives: Korean

Lounge Review: Korean Air Lounge Osaka (KIX)

The Korean Air lounge at Osaka Kansai (KIX) airport is located outside of security and is accessible via Priority Pass. Go down to the third floor, and look for the lounge sign near Uniqlo. Given that the lounge is located outside of security and immigration, make sure to leave plenty of time to get to your gate on time. On this visit, it took me about 30 minutes to get through security and immigration after leaving the lounge.

Signs to the lounge

Entrance to the Korean Air lounge

The Korean Air lounge offers some seating and some food (theoretically).

Seating

More seating

Alcohol

Drink fridge

At breakfast, there were pastries, onigiri, instant soups, and instant noodles. But all of the food would disappear very quickly. As you can see from the below pictures, there was only one left of many of the items.

Sparse food options

Some packaged snacks

There’s also a meager assortment of beverages, but this lounge is really not worth a stop. It’s hard to find, the offerings are scant, and it’s located outside of security, so you can’t really relax until your flight.

Review: Korean Air Lounge Tokyo Narita Airport (NRT)

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On my way back from Hong Kong, I had about a two hour layover in Tokyo Narita, so I decided to check out two lounges I hadn’t yet reviewed, as I had already been to the ANA Suite and Business Class lounges a couple of weeks prior.

My first stop was the Korean Air Lounge, which is accessible via Priority Pass. This lounge is located near Gate 26 in Terminal 1.

Entrance to the Korean Air lounge

The lounge is just one large room. It’s a pretty spacious room, and it was only sparsely populated while I was there. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s pretty functional with lots of seating.

Seating

More seating

There was a separate first class section, although for the 45 minutes I was in the lounge, I didn’t see anyone use it.

Designated first class section

Seeing as this is Tokyo, there were the famous beer machines, which are supposed to pour a perfect glass of beer every time. There was also a sparse selection of other alcoholic beverages.

Beer machines

Booze

I was mostly interested in the food. Although everything was pre-packaged, I thought the food was decent for a business class lounge. They had lots of onigiri (rice balls stuffed with things), cups of noodles, and pastries, and I took a couple of things for the road, which was made easier by the fact that everything was pre-packaged. In retrospect, I was super, super glad that I had taken some stuff from this lounge, as I ended up being delayed for 7 hours on arrival into the US (most of that time stuck on a plane in Portland) and was so happy to have had some food in my bag.

Food options

More packaged foods

All in all, not a fancy lounge by any means, but the wifi was fast, there was plenty of seating, and the fact that all the food options are packaged means it’s very easy to take a snack for the road (even if you’re not technically supposed to take food out of airport lounges…). It’s definitely much less crowded than the United Club or ANA Lounges, so it can be a good alternative if you just want a quiet place to sit.

Around the World in 100 Hours: Korean Air Lounge and Singapore SilverKris Lounge Seoul

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Introduction
United Club San Francisco, International Terminal
United Business Class San Francisco to Seoul
Asiana Airlines Business Class Lounge Seoul
Korean Air Lounge and Singapore SilverKris Lounge Seoul
Singapore Business Class Seoul to Singapore
Ambassador Transit Lounge Singapore
Singapore SilverKris Lounge Singapore
Changi Airport Free Singapore Tour
Singapore Business Class Singapore to Colombo
Transiting Colombo
Lotus and Araliya Lounges Colombo
Qatar Airways Business Class Colombo to Doha
Qatar Airways First Class Premium Terminal Doha
Qatar Airways First Class Doha to Dubai
Emirates First Class Lounge Dubai
Emirates First Class Dubai to London Heathrow
British Airways Concorde Room London Heathrow
British Airways Galleries First Lounge and Club World Lounge London Heathrow
British Airways First Class London Heathrow to San Francisco

The lounges at ICN in the Concourse are all relatively close together, so it was easy to stop in multiple lounges.

My next stop after the Asiana lounge was the Korean Air lounge, which is also part of the Priority Pass network. When I checked in, the desk agent couldn’t figure out why I would want to use his lounge when I could use the Asiana lounge, but he let me in anyway.

My first impression was that the Korean Air lounge is much lighter and airier. While the Asiana business class lounge has no windows to the outside, the Korean Air lounge has large windows with views of the tarmac.

Views from Korean Air lounge

Much more light than the Asiana lounge

The food and drink options, however, were much more sparse than the Asiana lounge, although this could be partly due to the time of day that I visited.

Beer on tap

Meager alcohol selection

My final stop was the Singapore SilverKris lounge, which was the lounge the check-in agent wanted me to use when I checked in for my flight.

Seating in SilverKris lounge

Work area

The lounge had a couple of different food offerings than the Asiana lounge, but I thought the Asiana lounge offerings were superior.

Dim sum

Food options

The lounge also had its own shower room (as did the Korean Air lounge), but I didn’t partake.

Shower room

Overall, if you don’t mind the lack of windows in the Asiana business class lounge, that would be my first choice of lounge in the Concourse at Seoul. The food offerings were superior, there were more shower rooms and quiet rooms, and there was just more space. But if the Asiana lounge is crowded, it wouldn’t hurt to check out one of the other lounges, since they’re all so close to one another.