My First Flight on ANA

I may have just found my new favorite airline (or at least, somewhere up there next to Virgin America). Why? For one, that economy class meal, which was almost as good as one might get at a restaurant, with thin, tender, fragrantly marinated karubi, all with the nice touches of miso soup, oroshi, and a generous bottle of water to accompany it. More importantly, the economy class seats were decked out, complete with laptop power, live camera feeds from the nose of the plane, and even Japanese food programs dubbed Iron Chef-style. I can't believe that I've been missing out on ANA all of this time.

Granted, the seat pitch here was claustrophobically tight. It almost felt like I was in one of those capsule hotels...not that I've ever actually been in one of those. I struggled for a while trying to place my power adapter into the plug underneath the seat because one simply couldn't bend down that far given the seat in front of you (I MacGyver'ed it by taking a photo with my phone and then figuring out how the plugs were oriented). Note that these were those fixed shell seats that slid out underneath you rather than reclining backwards, so thankfully the guy in front of me couldn't make it even more cramped than it already was.

Interestingly, ANA was also offering something called My Choice, which let you buy snacks like donburi and udon if you were still hungry after the official meal service. You could even pre-order a full business class meal in economy class if you wanted to, albeit at the cost of a whopping 5000 Yen (US$65). I didn't order any of this, but it was cool to see that such options were available. Seriously, I might have to consider taking ANA on my next flight to Japan or even the US, especially if I run out of Systemwide Upgrades on United. I'd much rather take Economy Class on ANA than on UA, and it would presumably be cheaper than SQ too.