Korea’s flag carrier Korean Air is set to relocate to Incheon Airport’s new Terminal 2 building starting January 18.
The airline will be joining fellow Skyteam members Delta Air Lines, Air France and KLM at the new terminal (other alliance airlines will remain at Terminal 1), enabling travellers on codeshare flights within the alliance to transfer without changing buildings. Those flying with other airlines will have to transfer to Terminal 1, which can be reached via shuttle.
Terminal 2 forms part of Incheon Airport’s new “3 Phase Construction Project”, which includes a new passenger terminal, a passenger and cargo apron, and connecting transport facilities.
Incheon Airport has been operating over its handling capacity, and the new facility is expected to add capacity for 18 million passengers, bringing the total to 72 million. Business Traveller took an in-depth look at the new passenger terminal in our feature article “Airport Update: Battling the Bottleneck”.
[embed]https://www.businesstraveller.com/features/airport-update-battling-bottleneck/[/embed]Just ahead of its relocation to Terminal 2, Korean Air is set to introduce its first Bombardier CS300 on its domestic services. Due to take off on January 16, the new aircraft is the first of its kind to be flown by an Asian airline and also sees the introduction of a premium economy cabin for Korean Air.
This Economy Plus cabin has 25 seats with four more inches of pitch compared with economy class for a total of 36 inches between rows. Seats also have 19 inches of width and a recline of 118 degrees, and are laid out in a 2-3 configuration (A-B, D-E-F) from row 28 to 32. The 102 economy class seats will also be 19 inches wide and span from row 33 to 53.
While the aircraft is set to operate on domestic routes for the time being, Korean Air has said that it “may later take advantage of the CS300 aircraft’s range and expand internationally”.
Korean Air has ten of the new CS300 on order.
