I Flew WestJet’s INAUGURAL Flight to Seoul!

I Flew WestJet’s INAUGURAL Flight to Seoul!

I flew on westjet’s inaugural flight to Soul at almost 12 hours long this is not only westjet’s second route to Asia but also now the longest flight in their Network to date first announced back in December this is yet another one of many new destinations from Calgary that WestJet has added over the years with their 787s Calgary has had some flights to Soul in the past mainly in the form of Charters though some Airlines have operated it as a scheduled seasonal service given that plus the potential for onward connections with co-chair partner Korean a Soul was kind of a natural choice for westjet’s next Asian destination before you say anything yes I predictably booked another one of these special flights again because well inaugural flights are fun especially when it’s to a brand new country right from home plus given last year’s phenomenal trip to Japan this turned out to be a great way to kick off a larger trip throughout Asia with some close friends for today’s inaugural I decided to sit in economy partly to see how westjet’s long haul economy offering holds up today that may sound counterintuitive for what again will be the airline’s longest flight yet but I did have another good reason for it as usual we got here nice and early and after dropping off our bags in the international terminal we headed over to Concourse B and westjet’s elevation Lounge obviously economy passengers don’t get complimentary lounge access but WestJet social media team was kind enough to upgrade my WestJet reward status to gold as a token of appreciation possibly for all the free advertising over the years just to be clear though all opinions here are my own and WestJet has not seen this video beforehand the lounge was a bit busy as expected but we found a spot in ordered some special Korean dishes that they had added to the menu these were delicious and we were all very well fed before the flight after enjoying plenty of free food over the course of an hour or so it was over to gate 80 where this time I was pleasantly surprised to see some stuff happening at the gate given last year’s lack of festivities for Tokyo my expectations were low so this was genuinely nice to see our plane however was not here yet and WestJet had delayed the flight by an hour already part of that is because well the 787 Fleet is stretched even thinner this summer which I’ll touch on a bit later in the meantime there was a very well put together gate event to Mark the occasion [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today as we celebrate our inaugural flight to Soul South Korea it’s part of our strategy to build out Calgary as a InterContinental or Global Hub and it’s actually already our ninth destination that we fly as WestJet outside of North America so we have now seven destinations in Europe and this is the second destination uh on the Pacific side the anural non-stop flight from Calgary to soul is truly a cause for celebration it’s exciting to see this flight taking off for the first time just one year after launching service to Asia out of YYC I’m sure uh this direct flight will greatly stimulate the People to People exchanges and then tourism and then open new chapter for uh trade and uh investment relations between Korea and El okay on a count of three 1 2 3 while that was taking place our plane had arrived at the gate the dream liner taking us to Korea today would be the fifth one delivered to WestJet tale 906 registered as Charlie golf Yankee Romeo Sierra this one was delivered to them in March of 2020 now today’s delay can be attributed to the fact that the 787 Fleet is still unfortunately stuck at just seven airplanes all seven planes are somehow even busier this summer than last year with not much room built into the schedule for delays or any unplanned maintenance on the same day as this the flight to Tokyo took a 5H hour delay plus 1 to 2H hour delays for Barcelona Paris and Edinburgh keep keep in mind it was part of Mr Bon Huns Brook’s new corporate strategy to Halt the remaining 787 orders back in 2022 and not take two of them that were fully assembled and painted in WestJet Livery from what I could tell looking at flight radar we were originally flying on tail 902 which was planned to fly from Calgary to Dublin and back before flying us to Soul that flight to Dublin left almost 3 hours late the previous night though forcing them to swap it to this plane which wouldn’t get here until an hour before the original departure time with another 787 presumably down for maintenance at the same time this might have been the best they could do still delaying an inaugural flight because of a seemingly self-inflicted lack of aircraft is unfortunate as a result we ended up boarding about an hour and a half later than planned but at least it was finally time to go to Korea we are pleased to welcome platinum and gold tier rewards members as well as guests seated in zone one to four West flight 086 to Soul now or at their convenience thank you for choosing West and my seat for the next 12 hours is in one of my personal favorite economy seats on the WestJet Dreamliner a window seat in the exit row at the third set of doors in 26a there are a couple quirks that this row has compared to a normal economy seat but with nothing in front of you it has easily the best leg room on the whole plane that does mean some compromises with fixed armrests and the inflight entertainment being between the seats the power ports are also down there too the safety cards and air sickness bags can be found in this pocket on the wall which is more accessible for the window seat than anyone else as is standard for all seats though there’s an adjustable headrest and also waiting at the seat was a pillow and a blanket settling in the window seat leg room is indeed what I was hoping for even if my legs do have to stretch out on a slight angle in today’s case I was very much willing to sacrifice the extra width of a premium seat for this also back here is a very solid view behind the wing now aside from the leg room another reason I wanted to sit here instead of splurging on premium was that I didn’t want this video to be too similar to last year’s flight to Tokyo however my buddy will did sit up in premium and got an excellent view of the engine there and ladies and gentlemen good afternoon and welcome on board flight 86 and off we go to S Korea how excited how excited all of us are so uh enjoy your flight the flight time will be 11 hours and 16 minutes with that we were finally on our way to Soul I’ll be at a bit late please enjoy this dual view of our departure from Calgary off of rway 35 right as a rem personal El for the dur of the flight I’m now for [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] with westjet’s longest ever flight now underway I made myself comfortable for the next 11 hours first off the caker handed out these complimentary WestJet earbuds to economy passengers there’d be two meal services on this flight one early on and another one before landing in Soul before that first service though here’s a look at the contents of that wall pocket with again just the same 787 safety card and air sickness bag while waiting for that service to start I took a peek at the gift bag that was given out during boarding which looked customade for this flight inside there was actually quite a lot first things first they had a bunch of traditional Korean cookies some hand sanitizer hand cream a Gins sank drink a tea bag a little Calgary sticker a Korean Transportation card and this detailed brochure on the country this was such a genuinely wellth thought out gift bag and the transportation card especially was an excellent idea kudos to the Korean tourism Association for putting these bags together as we flew further Northwest the clouds parted a bit and we got some proper Rocky Mountain views around Jasper at the same time the crew started a snack service giving out complimentary beverages plus a choice of cookie or pretzels these first few hours of the flight followed pretty much the entire rocky mountain chain all the way until Alaska so you can imagine there was no shortage of views outside somewhere over northern BC this combination of low-level clouds with the Peaks coming through created such a cool sight it was around that point about an hour and 40 minutes in that the meal service reached my row economy passengers had a choice between beef or pasta and I went for the beef which came with broccoli and rice in a sauce the me tray also included a bun a salad and the small bunt cake for dessert westad also uses wooden utensils now for economy which is nice but does make things a little trickier to cut this also came with another choice of a beverage and I got this cup of ginger ale now this beef was delicious and that sauce made it very very tasty the rest of the meal was pretty good although the butter wasn’t very spreadable the salad however was fresh and I enjoyed the cake too the only thing I would say is that the portion sizes for the main courses are a bit small I definitely could have had more of that but it doesn’t take away from just how good it tasted overall a really good meal for economy class westjet’s Long Haul economy catering was pretty solid pre pandemic and I’m glad to see it hasn’t changed much by that point we had left Canada well behind and found ourselves over the open Waters of the Gulf of Alaska we passed south of Anchorage and across cook inlets where we got treated to even more clear skies and gorgeous Snowy Mountains below after that I pulled out the inflight entertainment screen to see exactly where we were and was reminded of just how much longer we had left the built-in screens on the 787 are great and come equipped with this very easy to ous moving map as you can see though we still had quite a bit of distance to cover we obviously had to stay away from Russian airspace and we would actually fly towards Japan before turning West towards South Korea the rest of the inflight entertainment is the same as usual with a bunch of movies and TV shows to watch though the selection this month wasn’t the best after that the crew dimmed the cabin lights and so I decided to try and get some sleep as for the economy pillow and blank it well the pillow is one of those single-use ones and to be honest it’s better used as extra padding for the seat than anything the blanket is fairly light but it’s very soft and does the job well and from that point on I got very comfortable surprisingly I ended up sleeping for almost 5 hours and woke up just to the northeast of Japan the crew did come by with some more snacks at least once throughout that too eventually the lights came up again and the crew got ready to begin the pre-arrival service we hit some turbulence off the coast of Japan as the service was about to begin and it’s always fun watching the flaperon move like that due to the delay we’d unfortunately be landing it’s all in darkness now so I enjoyed the sunset lighting while I could as we approached Japan the pre-arrival service reached me which included a chicken stir Fred main course a cream cake for desserts and another choice of beverages the previous main course tasted a bit better but this wasn’t bad at all at that point we passed over the Southeastern coast of Japan and then later over the lights of Tokyo you can just make out Tokyo bay in the distance here it’s kind of funny to think that this is now the furthest west or east I suppose that a West ship plane has ever gone at that point there was not much else to see as it got darker and darker outside until the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula came into view and ladies and gentlemen it’s reparation for will now be coming to the cabin for final collection of items that require disposal or recycling in addition once we on the ground with that we were on The Descent and here’s the arrival into Soul inchon airport for the very first time landing on Runway 16 right [Music] [Applause] [Music] and ladies and gentlemen welcome to sou Korea the local time here is 8:57 as we so that was westjet’s inaugural flights to soul and for the airlines longest flight yet that was very enjoyable that exit row seat was a big part of that and although it does have some drawbacks like people congregating in front of you it was so worth it for my legs I’m also really glad there was more to Mark the occasion this time around when you think about WestJet having gone from a handful of 7372 200s flying around western Canada to now two destinations in Asia this is absolutely something worth celebrating I do however think that this is going to be a challenging summer for WestJet operationally as much as they want to serve as many destinations as they can with the planes they do have the current 787 schedule relies on everything going almost perfectly which as we know in aviation is never the case at the fact that YYC also has one of its runways closed for rehabilitation and you can see this is going to be an interesting summer obviously this is the time of the year to get the absolute most out of the fleet but the common theme Here seems to be maybe they need more than seven Dreamliners just maybe the point I want to make is that it’s so nice to see more expansion from WestJet and especially because it’s my home City that gets to reap the rewards from having so much connectivity I truly want to see the Calgary Global Hub succeed however even at this stage it sounds like they need more 787s [Music] thank you so much for watching this historic flight with WestJet and I will see you next time [Music] [Music]

On May 17th, 2024, WestJet inaugurated flights between Calgary, Canada, and Seoul, South Korea! This is the airline’s second ever route to Asia, operating 3x weekly on their flagship Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.

Predictably, yes, I booked the flight and got to fly on what is now WestJet’s longest flight in their network!

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FLIGHT INFORMATION
Airline: WestJet (WJA/WS)
Aircraft: Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner (B789)
Flight Number: WS86
Seat: 26A (Economy Class)
Livery: Standard
Engines: 2x General Electric GEnx-1B
Registration: C-GYRS
Route: Calgary (YYC) – Seoul-Incheon (ICN)
Callsign: WESTJET 86 heavy
Runway used: 35R (YYC) – 16R (ICN)
Date filmed: May 2024

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Outro song – “Take Flight” by Nyhtian: https://youtu.be/bCTTwQ_269c

© Alex Praglowski Aviation 2024

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