Name: Japan Airlines (JAL) Economy Review - LAX to NRT - Dreamliner Boeing 787-8
Uploaded: 2025-08-03T18:26:53.000Z
Duration: 17 min 1 s
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Future simple

Today we are going to talk about our experience flying on JAL and this is a trip that we took in March.

Past simple

We flew out of Los Angeles LAX to Narita Japan and then we also flew back on JAL from Narita airport to LAX.

To-infinitive

We originally wanted to find some premium seats because we've been really liking the premium seat experience.

Previously we've gone with United and Singapore Airlines but we really love JAL and since their premium seats were just a little bit out of our budget this time we're like you know what we've both been on JAL before in the past and we've sat in economy seats before and they were just fine so we were fine with it but we wanted to kind of do a review of it too just to show you how nice their economy seats are on JAL.

Specifically this one we're on the Dreamliner Boeing 787-8 so their planes are a 242 configuration so there's two seats to the side four in the middle and then two seats to the other side.

We arrived to Los Angeles airport I believe like three hours no actually it was like two and a half yeah and check-in was really easy actually there was no line I think we just walked right up to the check-in counter and the lady that was checking us in she took our passports and then gave us our ticket and also our baggage tickets.

Their boarding process is 30 minutes before actually even like 20 minutes I think before the departure time for international flight that's a very short window because usually when we fly international it's like 45 minutes before the departure time is when they start the boarding process but with JAL they start like 20-30 minutes before and then this process goes by like this and they go by group one two three and all of a sudden it's our group which was like four or five four or five is usually our boarding group because we chose the seats in the back because they you know sit in the they seat from the back first and then go towards the front like you know they should like airlines don't do that anymore.

I mean that's why it's so fast because there's not like some people in the front still putting up their baggage while you're trying to pass them like I feel like all airlines should do this I don't know why.

Yeah because it really speeds up the process and it streamlines everything.

Also at LAX they had a face recognition system or the technology.

That's probably why it moved fast too because there was no one like really like trying to shuffle through like their pockets looking for like a ticket.

It could be but on our way back they didn't have that technology but it still moved fast.

So yeah I don't know but that face recognition was actually really handy because or convenient for us for the passengers because you don't have to shuffle around and look for the passport or the boarding pass they just look at your face it recognizes it and then you can move in.

So once we settled into our seats we're kind of looking at the amenities that we had.

It's pretty simple since we were in economy.

Basically all you get are headphones I want to say.

The overhead bin space there was plenty of that.

There was like even like extra spaces open.

I don't think it was like a full flight but I mean it was you know there was like a good amount of people but we didn't have to fight for space so that was really nice.

Yeah and they also did not weigh our carry-on luggage which most airlines don't do that.

The only one that I've ever ran into an issue with that is Singapore Airlines.

They're really picky about your weight luggage but with JAL yeah it was no problem and I took my carry-on suitcase from Quintz which a lot of people ask if it fits in the overhead bin and it fits perfectly fine.

So even though these are economy seats the legroom is like spacious.

For economy seats especially because you know I'm five foot nine for reference and I have pretty long legs so I felt like I could stretch just plenty even with our bags underneath.

Both of us had the low and sun bag which is a pretty good size yeah but it's still both of those bags fit nicely under there and we had room to stretch out our feet so you know that again is like really nice for just an economy seat you know.

Yeah and I also like the headrest that they had.

That was really comfortable because I carry a neck that can be attached to the headrest which makes the sleeping position a lot more comfortable but we kind of went into it knowing that JAL will probably have really nice economy seats.

They kind of boast about that on their website so yeah I definitely think that's something they should boast about because it is nice size for economy.

Yeah so they're not exaggerating it's the truth like you really do have a lot of legroom and with this Dreamliner flight you or with the aircraft you get nice big windows too and they have a dimming feature where you can just push the button where it dims the window nicely and slowly or brightens it up slowly so I love these windows too like if you're talking about a window like who cares but you know back in the day windows used to be really small on airplanes so I like that they upgraded to like these big windows and I like looking outside to like the cloud view and everything too and so each seat has its own personal entertainment system and you can watch movies and there's like kids entertainment your flight info games and then they have like a really great selection of movies to choose from but I do feel like other flights that I've been on like on United had better selections when it came to like new movies especially it might be because they put more also Japanese stuff on there as well so I think they have to kind of split it yeah oh also as far as entertainment I mean if you have kids there was a kid a family sitting next to me and the flight attendant came and like basically presented a bunch of like coloring books and stuff like that for the child to choose from for their entertainment I thought that was so sweet that they did that for our kids so if you have kids you know that's just kind of like something they do extra I don't even think you have to ask for it just seemed like because they seem like they were kind of surprised like oh like I get to pick something so that's really nice entertainment for the kids this time we both purchased the wi-fi for the duration of the flight I think it was ten dollars for one hour fourteen dollars for three hours or eighteen dollars for the entire flight so might as well just pay eighteen dollars for it and yeah it worked really well this wi-fi there was a couple times when it got a little bit slow because you know they mentioned it ahead of time like there could be spots where there's like dead spots that you can't get wi-fi but for the majority of our flight the wi-fi worked really well I was surprised I was able to upload like stories on my Instagram so it's not just like basic checking your email so yeah I was pleasantly surprised how it worked shortly after takeoff I believe most airlines are the same like then they bring out the food I always look forward to meals on airlines specifically JAL and also ANA if you've ever flown ANA they have great meals but this time I was kind of surprised like how I don't know I didn't enjoy any of my meals I was a little bit disappointed not what I was expecting especially with JAL yeah so I like their snacks oh yes the snacks are awesome like the osembe the rice crackers fabulous so before you get your main meal they come out with like tea or coffee and then like this little Japanese crackers those are great I love those and then after that they come with the main meal so it was like sweet sliced beef over rice or salmon was the other option I believe okay yeah I can't remember yeah I know I didn't want fish the meat was okay it's what it's expected you know from when you're flying but the rice I was really disappointed with the rice because usually the rice is great but it was like overcooked and mushy and I'm like JAL what are you doing I definitely had better rice on other airlines but that's not Japanese that's not an Asian airline so that was really disappointing I'm like what is going on with JAL so that was kind of disappointing they had some other sides too which was like okay and then we get some dessert they give you Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream so I had a little bit of that you know Haagen-Dazs is always good before our second meal which is you know shortly before touchdown there is actually a snack bar during you know the middle of the flight which I really like this idea because I don't know any other airlines that do this but basically in the middle of the aircraft they'll just lay out a bunch of snacks for you to choose from and I was kind of curious to see what they had and had chocolate they had rice crackers like I enjoyed the little snacks that they had and I'm glad that they just kind of have that out there so you don't have to like bother the flight attendant that's one thing is like I hate having like push the button ask for service so I like that they just kind of have that laid out for you and then so two and a half hours before you land they give you another meal so this is kind of like your breakfast lunch it's actually more like lunch because they gave us a margarita pizza which was okay again it was all right and then candies when it came out the cheese wasn't even melted I'm like isn't pizza supposed to have melted cheese so but the flight attendant was really nice about it I was like hey like can I get another one where the cheese is actually melted and she's like okay yeah and she brought one right away and actually this time when she brought it she had me open it to make sure that the cheese was melted and it was so I don't I don't know what's going on if like their their oven wasn't working I don't know how they heat this stuff up but yeah I wasn't gonna eat a cold cold pizza so that was the the food on the flight which we weren't too happy with like it was just like all okay like we've definitely both had better food on different airlines which is like unusual for gel so bathrooms are like pretty good size one side was a little bit smaller than the other side which candy saw I didn't see the bigger side you did yeah the other side is like twice the size and both times I mean I think I use a bathroom three or four times that's always like spick and span clean they must go in there like all the time cleaning it up back to like the service to like impeccable service all always with gel so friendly too very friendly soft spoken you really care about how your flight is and how you know comfortable you are yeah so I do always love that about gel it makes you feel safe and like relaxed when the flight attendants and appreciated yeah because you know there are some airlines where you feel like you're like you're a nuisance like and I hate that feeling so much because you know when there is a problem it's nice to be able to feel comfortable to ask for help or questions and like yeah if there was an issue I would not have felt uncomfortable to ask for help so yeah I just love everyone's super friendly and helpful and then this flight was 11 hours but I believe 11 and a half somewhere around there but it went by so fast and you're like you know entertained by their entertainment system with the movies we had wi-fi so like we had a lot going on to you know preoccupy ourselves so this flight went by super fast for us we left at 11 50 a.m from lax and then we arrived in narita at 4 40 p.m yes I will say so when we landed customs and all that was fine but gel they laid out all of our luggage for us off the belt conveyor belt so I thought that was really cool when we got up when we got through customs like our bags were just already like waiting for us so that was nice so then on the way back we took gel again and this time our little sister came our youngest sister came back with us too um and this time again uh there was not much of a line so you know it was check-in was super fast their um luggage system was a little bit different where you weigh the luggage yourself and like get the tag and then put it um on the belt for them to take it in if your bag is overweight it won't take the bag it'll say call an attendant so I just like canceled it because I knew what the problem was because I knew it was overweight so I just had to like shift some things around and then put it on the weigher again and then it went through usually it's 50 pounds per bag yeah for 50 pounds yeah your check-in luggage and then you get two free check bags um with international flights and gel and then for carry-on you know your carry-on suitcase and then a personal item yeah and again they didn't they didn't weigh your personal items so that was that was nice to not have to worry about how heavy your personal items are so they're lenient with that yeah but again the boarding process is super fast um right when we arrived with the gate again we were like rushing they were already like calling our the boarding position yeah again we sat in the back we were in seats uh 50 so we're row 50 acd so two of us sat by the window and then one of us sat in the aisle area because again it's like a two for two configuration we figured like this way you know um if somebody had to use the bathroom like uh with the four seater they could go the other way you know and not have to bother yeah and that's what happened like no one ever want it was like a family next to me so no one really came on ever came on my side and woke me up so it worked out great everything was the same the same except the same like service really friendly um really helpful so actually my my monitor my screen my entertainment system wasn't working and so i called the flight attendant and she's like okay well let me reset it let me see if that helps so she's like just don't mess with it for like 10 minutes so i waited and then um it did come back on so i'm like cool but uh she did come back um by and she's like i just wanted to make sure is it working i'm like oh yeah i just love that she followed up on it um instead of just being like oh yeah it's working again super friendly and just making sure that you're comfortable and okay and in the past you know 10 years ago when i was on jail uh one of us was hot so we even like mentioned it like oh it's like a little bit hot in here so they even like checked on the temperature for us and said okay we brought it down a little bit and i'm just like wow i can't believe they even like took that into consideration for us and speaking of temperatures um jowl flight is a very comfortable like i want to say 75 degrees i don't think it's that warm no but it's pretty warm it's warm because usually when i go on flights i am like wearing a hoodie and a coat i got my long socks on i got my uggs because i'm freezing all the time but this i didn't have to wear my coat just had on like one little tiny sweater and i was comfortable throughout the entire um flight actually i had my uggs on i was a little bit too warm i wish i didn't wear my uggs but usually i'm like freezing so yeah so just keep that as a note like the temperature is warmer than usual airlines and then we purchased wi-fi again on this flight because we enjoyed it on our flight from lax and narita so like from narita to lax you know we want all three of us got the wi-fi and super comfortable flight um no issues so we're gonna go over the food again so this is like the only con i feel like with jowl this time the first meal that we got was ginger pork so it's like thinly sliced pork onions over rice again the rice was so gross what is going on with their rice situation it's so weird because usually they're fantastic yeah even our youngest sister was like oh what is this it's not that great so yeah all three of us didn't like our first meal the second meal was actually pretty good i didn't think i would like it but it was called taco rice which i don't know if you've heard of i've never heard of it yeah the rice was good finally yeah so rice was good on that and then so basically what you do is mix like taco ingredients on top of rice and you just mix that up they have like the meat they had lettuce tomatoes all that stuff shredded and then you just mix that up with the rice um and i didn't think i would like it at first but it was good yeah cindy was like no you should try it it's really good i've had it before i'm like oh you have so i did try i'm like it was superb yeah and i think the reason why it was good because it's something that they do in collaboration with muji and if you know muji it's like a really famous brand in japan so they sell that in their stores so they started selling i guess they collaborated with jowl so yeah as we said so this flight just zipped on by so this flight left japan at 5 10 p.m and then we got to lax at 10 50 a.m and candy and i we both have a global entry so customs is super fast for us we actually went through in like 10 seconds i believe our youngest sister she has a japanese passport so she had to go through the non-u.s citizens line and that took over an hour so yeah we were waiting at the baggage claim for a long time for her to come down i thought maybe something went wrong because she hasn't been to the states in a long time to visit so i'm like are they did they take her back for questioning like i was getting so worried that i actually went back upstairs and as i went up she was actually just at the counter i'm like oh my goodness it took her that long and once she got to the counter she was out like in but uh yeah it was surprisingly long yeah so i just wanted to note that uh for non-u.s citizens if you don't have global entry like it's gonna take some time to go through the lax customs yeah i don't know if it was a time of year because we went in march end of march also like one of our other friends uh your friend asami she went through yeah in the summer same thing she said it took her over an hour too so i just wanted to note that because that's a significantly long time to wait yes but yeah so that's our review um overall we really love gel economy seats i would definitely ride it again because especially at the price point and everything it was just it's fantastic i really love it hopefully this review helped you out if it did please give it a thumbs up and if you want to watch more of our videos please subscribe to our channel thanks for watching