Flight: Thai Airways TG 634 Bangkok to Seoul (with 1 hour stop in Taipei)
Duration: 5 hours 65 minutes
Equipment: A333 (Airbus 330-300)
Class: Business
Seat: 14 A
Seat Specification: Angle flat seats, Seat pitch:58.0 “, Seat width: 20 ”
I arrived at the Suvarnabhumi airport early in the morning about 1 hour before the check-in desks for Thai Airways opened. I just hung out the terminal taking a few pictures.
Pretty soon the Royal Silk Class check-in counters opened.
After check-in I made my way through security to the lounge but not before stopping to take a picture of this statue based on Hindu mythology.
There are plenty of Thai Royal Silk lounges in the airport. I went to the one closest to the concourse where my flight was leaving.
I had some finger sandwich (with ham and cheese) along with some paneer pakoras !!
Pretty soon it was boarding time. Thai Airways has two different configurations for its A330 fleet. This aircraft had 36 angled-flat seats in 2 x 2 x 2 configuration instead of the recliner seats that they have in many of its A330 aircraft on short haul flights. Although for these short flights, a recliner seat works for me but having angled-flat seats was icing on the cake.
The seat is traditional thai color fabric and had plenty of legroom in front. The seats were 20″ wide and were fairly comfortable.
After I settled down on the seat, I was offered options of welcome beverage and I chose Champagne. It was alright. The FA also requested my choice for breakfast and I chose fried rice with prawn.
Breakfast service started soon after takeoff. I wasn’t in mood for anything but the main course. The fried-rice was nothing outstanding but it could have more to do with the fact that I like long-grain rice in my fried rice (Indian style) compared to the small grain thai styled rice. It was not definitely anywhere close to the Thai style fried rice I had at the Renaissance resort in Phuket.
After landing in Taipei, for those of us who were continuing on to Seoul, we had to disembark from the plane and wait around an hour to get back on the plane.
After getting back on the plane, the FA came by for a welcome drink again and requested my choice for lunch. I picked wok-fried fish this time.
I liked the salmon terrine and waldorf salad. I had never had it before it was delicious.
The wok fried fish was just about average. The fish felt greasy and didn’t have much flavor to it. The disappointment from both the main courses in this flight was gone after I had the dessert though. It was awesome !!
I decided to take an hour nap after laying down the seat in full bed mode and as you can see even though it doesn’t get completely horizontal its close enough for a short flight like this.
Bottomline:
Seat: ****
Service: ****
Food: **1/2
For a 5 hour flight (especially counting the stop in Taiwan making the non-stop flight segments even shorter to 3 and 2 hours) the angled flat seat is more than sufficient for me. The seat is not as wide as the Singapore Airlines A330 but it could be worse. I could be flying in a recliner on this route !!
As far as service goes, the crew was really good on this flight. For a short enough flight such as this, they came by again and again checking up on passengers.
The food was the main downer on this flight. I didn’t care much for either the prawn fried rice or the wok-fried fish. I’ve had much better food on the Thai 657 flight from Incheon-Bangkok last year.