Personally, I have terrible experience with JAL. Have to fly with them frequently for work and the aircraft is always ALWAYS late. Either 30 minutes or even 1-2 hours late. Every single flight.
Since I live in a city that has 門限 for landing after 22:00, I always get extremely anxious when I have an evening flight because there’s a massive possibility of landing in a completely different city or even being redirected to the starting point.
Then, after getting super frustrated with JAL, I’ve dug more into it and started seeing news in the media regarding late aircrafts and problems at the airports. It’s always JAL.
Another thing is how JAL treats luggage – after a few incidents of my suitcases being smashed, pierced, covered in dirt, or whatever, I never put it “raw” into JAL’s registered truck anymore. Still it can be smashed and damaged. I’m so tired of their shit service.
Always had an excellent service and pleasant flights with ANA, hell even the cheap Peach or Skymark, the latter which I stan for the immaculate quality and good prices. All of these airlines are always on time unless there’s a major emergency.
Tl;dr: why JAL flights are always late? Is there any known internal problem with this company?
29 comments
JAL stands for Just Always Late
🤷🏻
Sounds like a combo of a problem with your airport and the fact that you fly a lot? Though you can look at the suitcases being thrown around, I wouldn’t trust suitcases to come out of that very clean (pierced is intense!).
I have found that luggage in particular, certain routes involve people with a lot more or a lot less luggage and that greatly affects results. I’ve personally gone to just using a Thule Landmark 60 for trips (I can easily get a weeks worth of clothes in there, so combining that with laundry service and it’s effectively unlimited, detachable daypack included), and I just carry that on.
But yeah, I see so much variability from airports rather than from the operator themselves. No amount of good service makes Haneda arrivals less grueling (especially when you come back on those buses)
people seem to love JAL .. but I’ve had some crappy service .. CA sometimes have bad attitudes..and I always fly business… asked for an extra piece of bread and the CA said ‘bread isn’t tabehodai’. nasty …
JAL is actually the 3rd most on-time airline in the world, statistically. Probably just an issue with your airport.
Can’t link here but literally google “most on time airlines”…
JAL is the best airline I’ve ever used, overall.
JAL makes BA look like paradise.
Expensive though unfortunately.
I’ve flown on JAL 22 times in the last year. Every single flight was on time or departed early after boarding completed quickly. The only issue I had was one time the touchscreen for the inflight entertainment system wasn’t functioning, so the flight attendant just relocated me to a vacant seat in business class.
ANA, on the other hand, actually canceled one of my flights – but they stuck us in a five star hotel to wait for the next available flight and gave us vouchers for meals, drinks, and without being prompted had the legally mandated compensation payments available at Haneda and handed them to all the affected passengers as soon as we got out the door.
Unrelated but I find it so fascinating how the word “stan” has now basically entered mainstream vocabulary. Language is so interesting 🙂
I’ve had my luggage broken several times, and they always have it fixed for me or compensate me in cash if it’s not worth fixing. You just have to bring it to their attention right away at the baggage claim.
Had no issues with JAL or ANA.
Late evening departures and arrivals will always be a issue as delays will build up in the air traffic system throughout the day leading to a knock on effect.
Which airport are you flying out of?
I find Fukuoka airport frequently has delays due to it being a single runway so it could be that it’s not specifically an issue with JAL?
Mostly I take LLC’s like Peach and Jetstar and delays are pretty frequent but not typically more than 30 minutes.
I love JAL! Their check-in staff pulled us out of a massive hole on our honeymoon, and compared to british airways (who are utter garbage) JAL are absolute saints and I’ll have nothing bad said about them!
But seriously, you’ve probably suffered a couple of times at their hands and now have confirmation bias every time you see them make a mistake.
Hello my fellow Fukuokan.
Thankfully diverting to Kitakyushu airport has recently been made possible so now it’s not as worrying as it used to be
Ive flown with JAL maybe 50 times. I can only recall one delayed flight ever. And that was due to snow.
Strange. Never ever in my 10 years of flying JAL had any issue I can recall.
I’ve never been on JAL, their safety record still concerns me. When I’m domestic I try to stick to ANA unless a train is cheaper, and if I go international I’m exclusively on Delta.
Jal is the best i have ever had domestically and international. Which airport did u used?
I don’t really fly domestics with JAL but International JAL has almost always been on time and luggage is handle pretty well compare to western airlines.
I do find luggage is less likely to get banged up if you’re flying in a wide body jet. In wide body they only get handle by people twice, load & unloading the transport container. For narrow body they usually have to load the baggage into the plane one by one, which usually result it being toss around by multiple people.
Need a bit more context here. From where to where? You cannot just generalize.
I’ve flown ANA more than JAL but haven’t had any issues when I did fly JAL. They’ve been on time, provided good service, and just plain got the job done without hassles. I’m not sure what your experience is based on but it reads like a photo negative of mine.
You should check out Real ATC videos.
Jakarta Air Lines is ok in Indonesia.
I agree and avoid JAL whenever I can. The air conditioner is too hot. I know foreign companies flying into/from Japan keep the temperatures higher, but JAL is extreme. Also twice in international flights all 3 main meal choices had seafood (which I don’t eat).
I only had problems with ANA once despite flying with them multiple times every year (flight canceled, got an email asking to call them and the waiting time to get an attendant was over 1 hour!). I also agree that skymark is fabulous, but it’s hardly a competitor of JAL.
You wanna see a shit airline? Try an American airline. Every single plane was late.. 50% of the staff were helpful. And a good chunk wanted extra fees for bags.
If JAL is shit, I don’t know what you think about other airlines.
I have never had food poisoning in my life, until I flew with JAV and ate their shitty food.
My only issue with JAL is their absolutely awful vegetarian meals.
I mean it’s very in-character for Japan in general not knowing how/what to cook for veggies, it’s just annoying when they’re literally the most expensive way to travel to Europe, yet haven’t got past the “I dunno, give them a boiled potato and a celery stick” mentality of the 1980s.
Going from EU to Japan with them is slightly better, but not by much, but compare them to British Airways, or any of the other EU airlines and its frankly embarrassing.
Punctuality is fine.
Gotta be honest. Can’t relate. Although you’re a way more frequent flyer so your opinion ways more than mine but I never had any problems
I’ve always found both JAL and ANA to be stellar airlines.