Tray Tables and Time Zones

The Ramble: Budget Flying across the Pacific with ZipAir

• Josh Bogle

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What if you could fly across the Pacific without breaking the bank? On this episode of Tray Tables and Time Zones, we introduce our new segment, the Ramble, with an in-depth review of ZipAir, Japan’s low-cost airline owned by Japan Airlines. We cover everything from its fleet of Boeing 787s to its destinations spanning the US, Canada, and Asia. Tune in to hear our thoughts on the booking process, where we navigated their clunky website, discuss important tips for the check-in process and suggestions to follow baggage weight limits to avoid those pesky extra fees.

Ready for a budget-friendly flight experience? We take you onboard a ZipAir journey from Narita to the West Coast of the US, detailing the surprisingly good food quality, the professional and friendly flight attendants, and the cleanliness of the bathrooms. However, it’s not all smooth sailing; we also highlight challenges like poor Wi-Fi and the necessity for advance meal orders, especially for families. While ZipAir shines for solo travelers and couples, we suggest mainline carriers for families due to better connectivity and seating options. Don’t forget to stay connected with our travel community on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, where we share more travel tips and adventures. Thanks for tuning in!

Josh:

Hey everyone and welcome back to Tray Tables and Time Zones. Today I've got something a little different for you. I'm introducing our new segment, the Ramble, and the Ramble is going to be short, quick-hit reviews of all things travel, from airlines to hotels, to luggage, to electronics and everything in between. We will cover, review and give you our assessment of whether it's worth your time and money. So, with the first review being about ZipAir, a Japanese low-cost airline, how we're going to do these reviews with airlines is going to be an overview of the airline, booking the tickets, checking in, boarding, the in-flight experience and then our overall thoughts if it's worth your time and money. So, without any further ado, let's jump right in here.

Josh:

So Zip Air is owned by Japan Airline JAL and started passenger service October 16th of 2020. Obviously, not the best timing we've ever seen, but you know who could predict the next two years of shutdown, so I'll give them some slack there. So they're based in Tokyo, at Narita, and at the present time they fly to Vancouver in Canada, Manila in the Philippines, Singapore in obviously Singapore. Seoul in South Korea, Bangkok in Thailand and then four locations in the US Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose. They operate a fleet of eight Boeing 787s and I believe they have two on order. The airplanes are set up in a two-cabin configuration a premium cabin with 18 lie-flat seats and an economy cabin with 272 standard seats in a 3-3-3 configuration. So the cabin is fairly standard and what most people are used to.

Josh:

Now the big kicker with Zip Air comes in in the price, in that it's a budget airline, so it is certainly a lower priced ticket. But that ticket basically only guarantees you a seat on the plane and, I think, a small personal bag. Other than that, everything else is an add-on. So if you want to bring more luggage, that's an add-on. If you want to select your seat, that's an add-on. If you want to have a meal on the plane or other snacks or drinks or anything like that, that is an add-on. In fact, the only other thing I think that's available on board the plane that isn't an additional cost is the Wi-Fi, and we'll talk about the Wi-Fi later because it's probably not an additional cost for a reason. But anyway, that's the big change here with this airline, or the big difference with other mainline airlines, is that everything here costs an additional fee. So you start with a very cheap ticket but depending on what you order and what you want, it can get pretty pricey pretty quick.

Josh:

So I will say, when it comes to booking the tickets, I found the website to be kind of clunky. It's not a great website, it's not super intuitive. Once you get into it and kind of figure it out, you flow through the different pages and steps of booking the flights fairly easily. But it's not a visual masterpiece or a user-friendly masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. But got on there.

Josh:

This flight for us was going to be a return from Japan back to the US. We were going on a trip to Japan for a couple of weeks and flying over on United, but flying back on Zip Air because we wanted to try it out and it was also a fairly economical option to get back across the Pacific. So we were booking four tickets total, one for myself, my wife and my kids and so at the time we booked we were offered several packages. I think there was two different packages and those packages were kind of bundles of services, right, that were a certain set amount of money for a small amenity kit, a meal, a bottle of water, seat selection, those types of things, right and so I ended up selecting one of those packages for each of the four tickets and then after that you were allowed to go in and select your seats, select the meal that would be included. They have a kind of a menu online and you have to book it there and those types of things and so I did all that, got it paid for. Like I said, once you got into the actual booking portion of it, the website was pretty easy to navigate. It was just clunky at the beginning in the way it appears and moving about it. So tickets were set, received some emails back and forth with all the ticket information. Great, no problem there.

Josh:

When it was time to fly home, the flights all leave out of Tokyo Narita the check-in. While they are very strict on that three-hour window, they don't open their check-in counters until three hours before the flight, no matter what. Initially it was a little slow getting up to the counter to check in, but not too bad. And then, once we got there, the check-in agent was very nice, very quick. We had our stuff together right, we knew exactly what luggage we were checking. We knew that it was underweight in size for them for what we were allowed under our package, and so our check-in went very smoothly. We did notice that there was some other folks that were having a bit of a time checking in and it's probably because they hadn't paid attention. From what we could tell, they were overweight on their bags from what they purchased. And if you've flown other budget airlines in the world, you know that the worst time to try to buy additional weight for a budget airline is at the counter when you're checking in, because they will absolutely screw you on the cost. So one thing I would recommend is making sure that you've got those weights on lock, you know exactly how much those suitcases weigh or your baggage weighs, and that it is under your allowed amount. So just a little tidbit there, but other than that, checking was fine.

Josh:

You know, go through immigration and get into the terminal, and I've flown in and out of Narita several times, so very familiar with the terminal. The gate was on one of the little satellites inside the terminal there. And here's one of my first problems, and that is boarding. Okay, boarding usually in Japan is a thing of beauty. For some reason in Japan they can load and unload the biggest jets in the world extremely quickly and efficiently. For some reason, loading onto Zip Air was an absolute shit show. I mean, huge crowd of people crowded around, agents at the counter like sort of holding up signs representing row numbers, but nobody paid any attention to it Absolute, freaking shit show. I mean it took forever to get on this damn plane. It was. It was a frigging mess. And I was. I was stunned because I had been telling my wife oh you know, boarding a plane in Japan is amazing, you're going to love it. And there we get there and it's just a shit show. I mean, god, it was a mess but we eventually get on the plane and we're getting ready to go.

Josh:

The flight attendants, initially very professional, very friendly. Uh, we find our seats. We're setting. Since the seats are three, three, three we're setting. Three of us are sitting in the middle and then I'm on the aisle of the row that against the side of the airplane, so we're somewhat together, right? The seats were very comfortable. For an economy seat on a nine hour flight, I have no real complaints. It's pretty much what you expect, right? I mean, they didn't use the cheapest seat in the world, they actually used a Recaro seat, so it's pretty comfortable. But it's an economy seat on a long haul flight. So nothing's going to be amazing because you're an economy on a long haul. It's, you know, it's just getting through it right. So the seats were fine. You know there was power at the seats. There was. The tray table was good. It had a couple of different little functions in it so you could watch on your phone. You know, watch tv on your phone and things.

Josh:

Here's where I'll go ahead and talk about the wi-fi. They advertise that you can have wi-fi on the plane and you can stream from it. That is complete bullshit. I found the wi-fi to be absolute garbage. In fact I don't know that it worked most of the time, it was just it was not good. So a quick note here there are no IFE systems on these planes. There's no screens on the plane. You have to bring your own device to have any type of music or television or movies or any type of entertainment. So I will tell you right now if you fly zip air, make damn sure that you download anything that you want to listen to or watch onto that device before you get on this plane and make sure you have enough of it, depending on the length of your flight, because you cannot rely on the wifi for anything You're lucky to be able to get online, let alone stream or download or anything like that. Forget it, so just pretend it doesn't exist and download all those things onto your device. Just an FYI the Wi-Fi sucks.

Josh:

Okay, next is the food. So I didn't have high expectations here because it's a budget airline, but they did have a fairly extensive menu when I booked the flight that you could select from. So I ended up selecting a bunch of different things for us to try, because I wanted to try it all and see what was good, what was bad, and it was the first time on the airline, and so I really wanted to know. Surprisingly, the food was actually pretty damn good. It was delivered, I think, about an hour after we took off. It was delivered hot, it was fresh, tasted fresh. I had a beef bowl and I had a bite of the soba noodles and a couple other things, and all of them were tasty. They were really good. I was actually impressed with the quality of the food. Now I will say that I firmly believe that is because we flew out of Narita and that is their home base, right? So the catering is going to be the best out of Narita, and that is their home base, right. So the catering is going to be the best out of Narita.

Josh:

I can't vouch for any type of food they serve coming out of LA or San Francisco or any of the other locations that they fly from back to Narita, but coming out of Narita the food was pretty good. I don't know if I hit it on a good day or not, but from my experience at least, the food's pretty good. That's usually the only I hit it on a good day or not, but from my experience at least, the food's pretty good. That's usually the only time you really interact with the flight attendants is when they are bringing you things. Now there is a smaller reduced menu on the plane where you can order drinks and snacks and a couple of meals, but that's very limited. So be aware of that that you want to be sure and make your any type of food order when you're booking, before you get on the plane. But again, you know, when I did interact with the flight attendants, when they brought the food around or whatever they were, they were very friendly, very nice, very professional. So no complaints there.

Josh:

Bathrooms were kept clean the entire flight. There wasn't, you know, trash on the floor. They would go in and clean up any water spills or anything like that. So, while the bathrooms were very bare bones I mean they're certainly not, you know, they're not the the business, our first class bathroom on Emirates, or anything they serve their purpose Right, and and they're clean, which I appreciate.

Josh:

The in-flight experience was pretty decent. I mean, it's what you expect. It was a budget airline, so it's kind of what you make of it, right? You can either make it just sitting at your chair, staring at the chair in front of you, or you can trick it up with a lot of food and drinks and extras. I thought the in-flight experience was overall pretty good.

Josh:

So, looking back on the flight, a couple of observations. Would I fly them again? Personally? I would fly them again as a solo traveler. Would I fly them again with my family? Probably not, and here's why, at least with kids that are, you know, teenagers, preteens they are used to a certain level of connectivity, so it's not just about having downloaded movies or music to watch on the plane, it's about being able to stay connected with friends and Instagram and TikTok and all those social media things. So it takes a decent amount to keep them entertained and with the Wi-Fi just sucking on this plane as bad as it did, I don't know that it would be very enjoyable for them at which in turn makes it not very enjoyable for me. Now on this flight they were fine. It was something new, novel and they were hyped, you know, because they had just spent two weeks in Japan.

Josh:

But I can tell you that you know if there was any consistency of flying you know long haul on zip air that would become a problem. Also, it requires you to do quite a bit of upfront work. You know if you're trying to do something fast and get you know the plane booked or you're doing something a long way from when you're going to fly. Having to make all these meal decisions and everything early on is kind of a pain because who knows what happens in the meantime, of what you might want or what you might not want or how many bags you're going to have, and you kind of have to know those things up front. So if you overbuy on souvenirs and have to add bags, well that's going to cost you more. You know, obviously closer to the flight.

Josh:

So overall, I think if you're a solo traveler or even maybe a couple, I think Zip Air would work fine for you if you're looking for a cheaper, budget way to get across the Pacific over into Asia. But if it's a family, I might steer toward the mainline carriers, just because I'm pretty much guaranteed that they're going to have Wi-Fi, they're going to have food and drink available. I have the option to upgrade to a premium economy seat or whatever. So there's more options and more certainty with the mainline carrier. So if I've got again with having kids with me, I would look to that as the better option versus Zip Air. But again, as a solo traveler, I'd absolutely fly them again because it was a cheaper way to get where I wanted to go in relative comfort. And as long as you're somewhat prepared, you know, with downloading things to watch and entertain yourself and then getting some meals ordered on time, you know, or ahead of time, then you're going to have probably a pretty decent experience. But I will say, watch out for that boarding, because that boarding is a mess. Hopefully they'll get that fixed in the meantime. But yeah it's, that's a shit show.

Josh:

But anyway, this has been my review of Zip Air. Hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope it will help you make decisions with your flying toward Asia from the West Coast of the US later on your travels. It's a good option to have. I mean, the more options we have, you know, and the more price points we have, the more people are able to travel, and that's always a good thing.

Josh:

So I hope this helped you. I hope you enjoyed it. If so, please give us a rate and review on wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, you can check us out on YouTube we're on there now as well and also check us out on our socials, on Instagram and TikTok. I post a lot of videos, a lot of photos from past travels over there or current travels, and so that's a fun way to kind of see the places I talk about. Please, just you know, follow the show, promote the show, share the show with your friends and hopefully we can build this great little travel community through this podcast, and it makes all of our travel a little bit more fun. We can laugh at the experiences that we have along the way. Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you on the next one.

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Josh Bogle

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