September 12, 2024 • 16 mins
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!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Josh (00:30):
Hey everyone and welcome back to Tray Tables and Time
Zones.
Today I've got something alittle different for you.
I'm introducing our new segment, the Ramble, and the Ramble is
going to be short, quick-hitreviews of all things travel,
from airlines to hotels, toluggage, to electronics and
(00:51):
everything in between.
We will cover, review and giveyou our assessment of whether
it's worth your time and money.
So, with the first review beingabout ZipAir, a Japanese
low-cost airline, how we'regoing to do these reviews with
airlines is going to be anoverview of the airline, booking
(01:12):
the tickets, checking in,boarding, the in-flight
experience and then our overallthoughts if it's worth your time
and money.
So, without any further ado,let's jump right in here.
So Zip Air is owned by JapanAirline JAL and started
passenger service October 16thof 2020.
Obviously, not the best timingwe've ever seen, but you know
(01:34):
who could predict the next twoyears of shutdown, so I'll give
them some slack there.
So they're based in Tokyo, atNarita, and at the present time
they fly to Vancouver in Canada,Manila in the Philippines,
Singapore in obviously Singapore.
Seoul in South Korea, Bangkokin Thailand and then four
(01:57):
locations in the US Honolulu,Los Angeles, San Francisco and
San Jose.
They operate a fleet of eightBoeing 787s and I believe they
have two on order.
The airplanes are set up in atwo-cabin configuration a
premium cabin with 18 lie-flatseats and an economy cabin with
(02:19):
272 standard seats in a 3-3-3configuration.
So the cabin is fairly standardand what most people are used
to.
Now the big kicker with Zip Aircomes in in the price, in that
it's a budget airline, so it iscertainly a lower priced ticket.
But that ticket basically onlyguarantees you a seat on the
plane and, I think, a smallpersonal bag.
(02:42):
Other than that, everythingelse is an add-on.
So if you want to bring moreluggage, that's an add-on.
If you want to select your seat, that's an add-on.
If you want to have a meal onthe plane or other snacks or
drinks or anything like that,that is an add-on.
In fact, the only other thing Ithink that's available on board
(03:03):
the plane that isn't anadditional cost is the Wi-Fi,
and we'll talk about the Wi-Filater because it's probably not
an additional cost for a reason.
But anyway, that's the bigchange here with this airline,
or the big difference with othermainline airlines, is that
everything here costs anadditional fee.
So you start with a very cheapticket but depending on what you
(03:28):
order and what you want, it canget pretty pricey pretty quick.
So I will say, when it comes tobooking the tickets, I found the
website to be kind of clunky.
It's not a great website, it'snot super intuitive.
Once you get into it and kindof figure it out, you flow
through the different pages andsteps of booking the flights
(03:49):
fairly easily.
But it's not a visualmasterpiece or a user-friendly
masterpiece by any stretch ofthe imagination.
But got on there.
This flight for us was going tobe a return from Japan back to
the US.
We were going on a trip toJapan for a couple of weeks and
flying over on United, butflying back on Zip Air because
(04:10):
we wanted to try it out and itwas also a fairly economical
option to get back across thePacific.
So we were booking four ticketstotal, one for myself, my wife
and my kids and so at the timewe booked we were offered
several packages.
I think there was two differentpackages and those packages
were kind of bundles of services, right, that were a certain set
(04:34):
amount of money for a smallamenity kit, a meal, a bottle of
water, seat selection, thosetypes of things, right and so I
ended up selecting one of thosepackages for each of the four
tickets and then after that youwere allowed to go in and select
your seats, select the mealthat would be included.
(04:54):
They have a kind of a menuonline and you have to book it
there and those types of thingsand so I did all that, got it
paid for.
Like I said, once you got intothe actual booking portion of it
, the website was pretty easy tonavigate.
It was just clunky at thebeginning in the way it appears
and moving about it.
So tickets were set, receivedsome emails back and forth with
(05:18):
all the ticket information.
Great, no problem there.
When it was time to fly home,the flights all leave out of
Tokyo Narita the check-in.
While they are very strict onthat three-hour window, they
don't open their check-incounters until three hours
before the flight, no matterwhat.
Initially it was a little slowgetting up to the counter to
(05:41):
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 underweightin size for them for what we
were allowed under our package,and so our check-in went very
smoothly.
(06:01):
We did notice that there wassome other folks that were
having a bit of a time checkingin and it's probably because
they hadn't paid attention.
From what we could tell, theywere overweight on their bags
from what they purchased.
And if you've flown otherbudget airlines in the world,
you know that the worst time totry to buy additional weight for
a budget airline is at thecounter when you're checking in,
(06:23):
because they will absolutelyscrew you on the cost.
So one thing I would recommendis making sure that you've got
those weights on lock, you knowexactly 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
(06:44):
was fine.
You know, go through immigrationand get into the terminal, and
I've flown in and out of Naritaseveral times, so very familiar
with the terminal.
The gate was on one of thelittle satellites inside the
terminal there.
And here's one of my firstproblems, and that is boarding.
Okay, boarding usually in Japanis a thing of beauty.
(07:09):
For some reason in Japan theycan load and unload the biggest
jets in the world extremelyquickly and efficiently.
For some reason, loading ontoZip Air was an absolute shit
show.
I mean, huge crowd of peoplecrowded around, agents at the
(07:31):
counter like sort of holding upsigns representing row numbers,
but nobody paid any attention toit Absolute, freaking shit show
.
I mean it took forever to geton this damn plane.
It was.
It was a frigging mess.
And I was.
I was stunned because I hadbeen telling my wife oh you know
(07:51):
, boarding a plane in Japan isamazing, you're going to love it
.
And there we get there and it'sjust a shit show.
I mean, god, it was a mess butwe eventually get on the plane
and we're getting ready to go.
The flight attendants, initiallyvery professional, very
friendly.
Uh, we find our seats.
We're setting.
Since the seats are three,three, three we're setting.
(08:16):
Three of us are sitting in themiddle and then I'm on the aisle
of the row that against theside of the airplane, so we're
somewhat together, right?
The seats were very comfortable.
For an economy seat on a ninehour flight, I have no real
complaints.
It's pretty much what youexpect, right?
I mean, they didn't use thecheapest seat in the world, they
actually used a Recaro seat, soit's pretty comfortable.
But it's an economy seat on along haul flight.
(08:37):
So nothing's going to beamazing because you're an
economy on a long haul.
It's, you know, it's justgetting through it right.
So the seats were fine.
You know there was power at theseats.
There was.
The tray table was good.
It had a couple of differentlittle functions in it so you
could watch on your phone.
You know, watch tv on yourphone and things.
Here's where I'll go ahead andtalk about the wi-fi.
They advertise that you canhave wi-fi on the plane and you
(09:01):
can stream from it.
That is complete bullshit.
I found the wi-fi to beabsolute garbage.
In fact I don't know that itworked most of the time, it was
just it was not good.
So a quick note here there areno IFE systems on these planes.
There's no screens on the plane.
You have to bring your owndevice to have any type of music
(09:23):
or television or movies or anytype of entertainment.
So I will tell you right now ifyou fly zip air, make damn sure
that you download anything thatyou want to listen to or watch
onto that device before you geton this plane and make sure you
have enough of it, depending onthe length of your flight,
because you cannot rely on thewifi for anything You're lucky
(09:44):
to be able to get online, letalone stream or download or
anything like that.
Forget it, so just pretend itdoesn't exist and download all
those things onto your device.
Just an FYI the Wi-Fi sucks.
Okay, next is the food.
So I didn't have highexpectations here because it's a
budget airline, but they didhave a fairly extensive menu
(10:06):
when I booked the flight thatyou could select from.
So I ended up selecting a bunchof different things for us to
try, because I wanted to try itall and see what was good, what
was bad, and it was the firsttime on the airline, and so I
really wanted to know.
Surprisingly, the food wasactually pretty damn good.
It was delivered, I think,about an hour after we took off.
(10:27):
It was delivered hot, it wasfresh, tasted fresh.
I had a beef bowl and I had abite of the soba noodles and a
couple other things, and all ofthem were tasty.
They were really good.
I was actually impressed withthe quality of the food.
Now I will say that I firmlybelieve that is because we flew
out of Narita and that is theirhome base, right?
(10:48):
So the catering is going to bethe best out of Narita, and that
is their home base, right.
So the catering is going to bethe best out of Narita.
I can't vouch for any type offood they serve coming out of LA
or San Francisco or any of theother locations that they fly
from back to Narita, but comingout of Narita the food was
pretty good.
I don't know if I hit it on agood day or not, but from my
experience at least, the food'spretty good.
That's usually the only I hitit on a good day or not, but
from my experience at least, thefood's pretty good.
(11:10):
That's usually the only timeyou really interact with the
flight attendants is when theyare bringing you things.
Now there is a smaller reducedmenu on the plane where you can
order drinks and snacks and acouple of meals, but that's very
limited.
So be aware of that that youwant to be sure and make your
any type of food order whenyou're booking, before you get
(11:33):
on the plane.
But again, you know, when I didinteract with the flight
attendants, when they broughtthe food around or whatever they
were, they were very friendly,very nice, very professional.
So no complaints there.
Bathrooms were kept clean theentire flight.
There wasn't, you know, trashon the floor.
They would go in and clean upany water spills or anything
like that.
So, while the bathrooms werevery bare bones I mean they're
(11:56):
certainly not, you know, they'renot the the business, our first
class bathroom on Emirates, oranything they serve their
purpose Right, and and they'reclean, which I appreciate.
The in-flight experience waspretty decent.
I mean, it's what you expect.
It was a budget airline, soit's kind of what you make of it
(12:17):
, right?
You can either make it justsitting at your chair, staring
at the chair in front of you, oryou can trick it up with a lot
of food and drinks and extras.
I thought the in-flightexperience was overall pretty
good.
So, looking back on the flight,a couple of observations.
Would I fly them again?
Personally?
(12:37):
I would fly them again as asolo traveler.
Would I fly them again with myfamily?
Probably not, and here's why,at least with kids that are, you
know, teenagers, preteens theyare used to a certain level of
connectivity, so it's not justabout having downloaded movies
or music to watch on the plane,it's about being able to stay
(13:01):
connected with friends andInstagram and TikTok and all
those social media things.
So it takes a decent amount tokeep them entertained and with
the Wi-Fi just sucking on thisplane as bad as it did, I don't
know that it would be veryenjoyable for them at which in
(13:23):
turn makes it not very enjoyablefor me.
Now on this flight they werefine.
It was something new, novel andthey were hyped, you know,
because they had just spent twoweeks in Japan.
But I can tell you that you knowif there was any consistency of
flying you know long haul onzip air that would become a
problem.
Also, it requires you to doquite a bit of upfront work.
(13:44):
You know if you're trying to dosomething fast and get you know
the plane booked or you'redoing something a long way from
when you're going to fly.
Having to make all these mealdecisions and everything early
on is kind of a pain because whoknows what happens in the
meantime, of what you might wantor what you might not want or
(14:05):
how many bags you're going tohave, and you kind of have to
know those things up front.
So if you overbuy on souvenirsand have to add bags, well
that's going to cost you more.
You know, obviously closer tothe flight.
So overall, I think if you're asolo traveler or even maybe a
couple, I think Zip Air wouldwork fine for you if you're
looking for a cheaper, budgetway to get across the Pacific
(14:26):
over into Asia.
But if it's a family, I mightsteer toward the mainline
carriers, just because I'mpretty 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 toa premium economy seat or
whatever.
So there's more options andmore certainty with the mainline
(14:48):
carrier.
So if I've got again withhaving kids with me, I would
look to that as the betteroption versus Zip Air.
But again, as a solo traveler,I'd absolutely fly them again
because it was a cheaper way toget where I wanted to go in
relative comfort.
And as long as you're somewhatprepared, you know, with
downloading things to watch andentertain yourself and then
(15:10):
getting some meals ordered ontime, you know, or ahead of time
, then you're going to haveprobably a pretty decent
experience.
But I will say, watch out forthat boarding, because that
boarding is a mess.
Hopefully they'll get thatfixed in the meantime.
But yeah it's, that's a shitshow.
But anyway, this has been myreview of Zip Air.
(15:30):
Hope you guys enjoyed it.
I hope it will help you makedecisions with your flying
toward Asia from the West Coastof the US later on your travels.
It's a good option to have.
I mean, the more options wehave, you know, and the more
price points we have, the morepeople are able to travel, and
that's always a good thing.
So I hope this helped you.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If so, please give us a rateand review on wherever you
(15:54):
listen to your podcasts.
Also, you can check us out onYouTube we're on there now as
well and also check us out onour socials, on Instagram and
TikTok.
I post a lot of videos, a lotof photos from past travels over
there or current travels, andso that's a fun way to kind of
see the places I talk about.
Please, just you know, followthe show, promote the show,
share the show with your friendsand hopefully we can build this
(16:16):
great little travel communitythrough this podcast, and it
makes all of our travel a littlebit more fun.
We can laugh at the experiencesthat we have along the way.
Thanks, everybody, and we'llsee you on the next one.
Hey everyone and welcome back to Tray Tables and Time
Zones.
Today I've got something alittle different for you.
I'm introducing our new segment, the Ramble, and the Ramble is
going to be short, quick-hitreviews of all things travel,
from airlines to hotels, toluggage, to electronics and
(00:51):
everything in between.
We will cover, review and giveyou our assessment of whether
it's worth your time and money.
So, with the first review beingabout ZipAir, a Japanese
low-cost airline, how we'regoing to do these reviews with
airlines is going to be anoverview of the airline, booking
(01:12):
the tickets, checking in,boarding, the in-flight
experience and then our overallthoughts if it's worth your time
and money.
So, without any further ado,let's jump right in here.
So Zip Air is owned by JapanAirline JAL and started
passenger service October 16thof 2020.
Obviously, not the best timingwe've ever seen, but you know
(01:34):
who could predict the next twoyears of shutdown, so I'll give
them some slack there.
So they're based in Tokyo, atNarita, and at the present time
they fly to Vancouver in Canada,Manila in the Philippines,
Singapore in obviously Singapore.
Seoul in South Korea, Bangkokin Thailand and then four
(01:57):
locations in the US Honolulu,Los Angeles, San Francisco and
San Jose.
They operate a fleet of eightBoeing 787s and I believe they
have two on order.
The airplanes are set up in atwo-cabin configuration a
premium cabin with 18 lie-flatseats and an economy cabin with
(02:19):
272 standard seats in a 3-3-3configuration.
So the cabin is fairly standardand what most people are used
to.
Now the big kicker with Zip Aircomes in in the price, in that
it's a budget airline, so it iscertainly a lower priced ticket.
But that ticket basically onlyguarantees you a seat on the
plane and, I think, a smallpersonal bag.
(02:42):
Other than that, everythingelse is an add-on.
So if you want to bring moreluggage, that's an add-on.
If you want to select your seat, that's an add-on.
If you want to have a meal onthe plane or other snacks or
drinks or anything like that,that is an add-on.
In fact, the only other thing Ithink that's available on board
(03:03):
the plane that isn't anadditional cost is the Wi-Fi,
and we'll talk about the Wi-Filater because it's probably not
an additional cost for a reason.
But anyway, that's the bigchange here with this airline,
or the big difference with othermainline airlines, is that
everything here costs anadditional fee.
So you start with a very cheapticket but depending on what you
(03:28):
order and what you want, it canget pretty pricey pretty quick.
So I will say, when it comes tobooking the tickets, I found the
website to be kind of clunky.
It's not a great website, it'snot super intuitive.
Once you get into it and kindof figure it out, you flow
through the different pages andsteps of booking the flights
(03:49):
fairly easily.
But it's not a visualmasterpiece or a user-friendly
masterpiece by any stretch ofthe imagination.
But got on there.
This flight for us was going tobe a return from Japan back to
the US.
We were going on a trip toJapan for a couple of weeks and
flying over on United, butflying back on Zip Air because
(04:10):
we wanted to try it out and itwas also a fairly economical
option to get back across thePacific.
So we were booking four ticketstotal, one for myself, my wife
and my kids and so at the timewe booked we were offered
several packages.
I think there was two differentpackages and those packages
were kind of bundles of services, right, that were a certain set
(04:34):
amount of money for a smallamenity kit, a meal, a bottle of
water, seat selection, thosetypes of things, right and so I
ended up selecting one of thosepackages for each of the four
tickets and then after that youwere allowed to go in and select
your seats, select the mealthat would be included.
(04:54):
They have a kind of a menuonline and you have to book it
there and those types of thingsand so I did all that, got it
paid for.
Like I said, once you got intothe actual booking portion of it
, the website was pretty easy tonavigate.
It was just clunky at thebeginning in the way it appears
and moving about it.
So tickets were set, receivedsome emails back and forth with
(05:18):
all the ticket information.
Great, no problem there.
When it was time to fly home,the flights all leave out of
Tokyo Narita the check-in.
While they are very strict onthat three-hour window, they
don't open their check-incounters until three hours
before the flight, no matterwhat.
Initially it was a little slowgetting up to the counter to
(05:41):
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 underweightin size for them for what we
were allowed under our package,and so our check-in went very
smoothly.
(06:01):
We did notice that there wassome other folks that were
having a bit of a time checkingin and it's probably because
they hadn't paid attention.
From what we could tell, theywere overweight on their bags
from what they purchased.
And if you've flown otherbudget airlines in the world,
you know that the worst time totry to buy additional weight for
a budget airline is at thecounter when you're checking in,
(06:23):
because they will absolutelyscrew you on the cost.
So one thing I would recommendis making sure that you've got
those weights on lock, you knowexactly 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
(06:44):
was fine.
You know, go through immigrationand get into the terminal, and
I've flown in and out of Naritaseveral times, so very familiar
with the terminal.
The gate was on one of thelittle satellites inside the
terminal there.
And here's one of my firstproblems, and that is boarding.
Okay, boarding usually in Japanis a thing of beauty.
(07:09):
For some reason in Japan theycan load and unload the biggest
jets in the world extremelyquickly and efficiently.
For some reason, loading ontoZip Air was an absolute shit
show.
I mean, huge crowd of peoplecrowded around, agents at the
(07:31):
counter like sort of holding upsigns representing row numbers,
but nobody paid any attention toit Absolute, freaking shit show
.
I mean it took forever to geton this damn plane.
It was.
It was a frigging mess.
And I was.
I was stunned because I hadbeen telling my wife oh you know
(07:51):
, boarding a plane in Japan isamazing, you're going to love it
.
And there we get there and it'sjust a shit show.
I mean, god, it was a mess butwe eventually get on the plane
and we're getting ready to go.
The flight attendants, initiallyvery professional, very
friendly.
Uh, we find our seats.
We're setting.
Since the seats are three,three, three we're setting.
(08:16):
Three of us are sitting in themiddle and then I'm on the aisle
of the row that against theside of the airplane, so we're
somewhat together, right?
The seats were very comfortable.
For an economy seat on a ninehour flight, I have no real
complaints.
It's pretty much what youexpect, right?
I mean, they didn't use thecheapest seat in the world, they
actually used a Recaro seat, soit's pretty comfortable.
But it's an economy seat on along haul flight.
(08:37):
So nothing's going to beamazing because you're an
economy on a long haul.
It's, you know, it's justgetting through it right.
So the seats were fine.
You know there was power at theseats.
There was.
The tray table was good.
It had a couple of differentlittle functions in it so you
could watch on your phone.
You know, watch tv on yourphone and things.
Here's where I'll go ahead andtalk about the wi-fi.
They advertise that you canhave wi-fi on the plane and you
(09:01):
can stream from it.
That is complete bullshit.
I found the wi-fi to beabsolute garbage.
In fact I don't know that itworked most of the time, it was
just it was not good.
So a quick note here there areno IFE systems on these planes.
There's no screens on the plane.
You have to bring your owndevice to have any type of music
(09:23):
or television or movies or anytype of entertainment.
So I will tell you right now ifyou fly zip air, make damn sure
that you download anything thatyou want to listen to or watch
onto that device before you geton this plane and make sure you
have enough of it, depending onthe length of your flight,
because you cannot rely on thewifi for anything You're lucky
(09:44):
to be able to get online, letalone stream or download or
anything like that.
Forget it, so just pretend itdoesn't exist and download all
those things onto your device.
Just an FYI the Wi-Fi sucks.
Okay, next is the food.
So I didn't have highexpectations here because it's a
budget airline, but they didhave a fairly extensive menu
(10:06):
when I booked the flight thatyou could select from.
So I ended up selecting a bunchof different things for us to
try, because I wanted to try itall and see what was good, what
was bad, and it was the firsttime on the airline, and so I
really wanted to know.
Surprisingly, the food wasactually pretty damn good.
It was delivered, I think,about an hour after we took off.
(10:27):
It was delivered hot, it wasfresh, tasted fresh.
I had a beef bowl and I had abite of the soba noodles and a
couple other things, and all ofthem were tasty.
They were really good.
I was actually impressed withthe quality of the food.
Now I will say that I firmlybelieve that is because we flew
out of Narita and that is theirhome base, right?
(10:48):
So the catering is going to bethe best out of Narita, and that
is their home base, right.
So the catering is going to bethe best out of Narita.
I can't vouch for any type offood they serve coming out of LA
or San Francisco or any of theother locations that they fly
from back to Narita, but comingout of Narita the food was
pretty good.
I don't know if I hit it on agood day or not, but from my
experience at least, the food'spretty good.
That's usually the only I hitit on a good day or not, but
from my experience at least, thefood's pretty good.
(11:10):
That's usually the only timeyou really interact with the
flight attendants is when theyare bringing you things.
Now there is a smaller reducedmenu on the plane where you can
order drinks and snacks and acouple of meals, but that's very
limited.
So be aware of that that youwant to be sure and make your
any type of food order whenyou're booking, before you get
(11:33):
on the plane.
But again, you know, when I didinteract with the flight
attendants, when they broughtthe food around or whatever they
were, they were very friendly,very nice, very professional.
So no complaints there.
Bathrooms were kept clean theentire flight.
There wasn't, you know, trashon the floor.
They would go in and clean upany water spills or anything
like that.
So, while the bathrooms werevery bare bones I mean they're
(11:56):
certainly not, you know, they'renot the the business, our first
class bathroom on Emirates, oranything they serve their
purpose Right, and and they'reclean, which I appreciate.
The in-flight experience waspretty decent.
I mean, it's what you expect.
It was a budget airline, soit's kind of what you make of it
(12:17):
, right?
You can either make it justsitting at your chair, staring
at the chair in front of you, oryou can trick it up with a lot
of food and drinks and extras.
I thought the in-flightexperience was overall pretty
good.
So, looking back on the flight,a couple of observations.
Would I fly them again?
Personally?
(12:37):
I would fly them again as asolo traveler.
Would I fly them again with myfamily?
Probably not, and here's why,at least with kids that are, you
know, teenagers, preteens theyare used to a certain level of
connectivity, so it's not justabout having downloaded movies
or music to watch on the plane,it's about being able to stay
(13:01):
connected with friends andInstagram and TikTok and all
those social media things.
So it takes a decent amount tokeep them entertained and with
the Wi-Fi just sucking on thisplane as bad as it did, I don't
know that it would be veryenjoyable for them at which in
(13:23):
turn makes it not very enjoyablefor me.
Now on this flight they werefine.
It was something new, novel andthey were hyped, you know,
because they had just spent twoweeks in Japan.
But I can tell you that you knowif there was any consistency of
flying you know long haul onzip air that would become a
problem.
Also, it requires you to doquite a bit of upfront work.
(13:44):
You know if you're trying to dosomething fast and get you know
the plane booked or you'redoing something a long way from
when you're going to fly.
Having to make all these mealdecisions and everything early
on is kind of a pain because whoknows what happens in the
meantime, of what you might wantor what you might not want or
(14:05):
how many bags you're going tohave, and you kind of have to
know those things up front.
So if you overbuy on souvenirsand have to add bags, well
that's going to cost you more.
You know, obviously closer tothe flight.
So overall, I think if you're asolo traveler or even maybe a
couple, I think Zip Air wouldwork fine for you if you're
looking for a cheaper, budgetway to get across the Pacific
(14:26):
over into Asia.
But if it's a family, I mightsteer toward the mainline
carriers, just because I'mpretty 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 toa premium economy seat or
whatever.
So there's more options andmore certainty with the mainline
(14:48):
carrier.
So if I've got again withhaving kids with me, I would
look to that as the betteroption versus Zip Air.
But again, as a solo traveler,I'd absolutely fly them again
because it was a cheaper way toget where I wanted to go in
relative comfort.
And as long as you're somewhatprepared, you know, with
downloading things to watch andentertain yourself and then
(15:10):
getting some meals ordered ontime, you know, or ahead of time
, then you're going to haveprobably a pretty decent
experience.
But I will say, watch out forthat boarding, because that
boarding is a mess.
Hopefully they'll get thatfixed in the meantime.
But yeah it's, that's a shitshow.
But anyway, this has been myreview of Zip Air.
(15:30):
Hope you guys enjoyed it.
I hope it will help you makedecisions with your flying
toward Asia from the West Coastof the US later on your travels.
It's a good option to have.
I mean, the more options wehave, you know, and the more
price points we have, the morepeople are able to travel, and
that's always a good thing.
So I hope this helped you.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If so, please give us a rateand review on wherever you
(15:54):
listen to your podcasts.
Also, you can check us out onYouTube we're on there now as
well and also check us out onour socials, on Instagram and
TikTok.
I post a lot of videos, a lotof photos from past travels over
there or current travels, andso that's a fun way to kind of
see the places I talk about.
Please, just you know, followthe show, promote the show,
share the show with your friendsand hopefully we can build this
(16:16):
great little travel communitythrough this podcast, and it
makes all of our travel a littlebit more fun.
We can laugh at the experiencesthat we have along the way.
Thanks, everybody, and we'llsee you on the next one.
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