This post is written by Katie about her flight from Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur during her second 2016 mileage run to Kuala Lumpur.

I arrived at the airport about 2 hours and 15 minutes before my flight. I checked in using the World Elite (OneWorld Sapphire equivalent) line and the agent moved me from a normal aisle seat to 45H – an exit row aisle seat – without me even asking.

I made my way through security and immigration with no issues. Immigration dropped me out right in front of the JAL Sakura Lounge.

Breakfast in the JAL Sakura Lounge

I headed immediately to the lounge as I was hungry. I enjoyed some hash browns, scrambled eggs, and miso soup in the dining room before settling into a lounge chair overlooking the tarmac.

Pretty JAL 767-300

Empty and beautiful JAL cabin

Boarding began right at 10:55am. It really is a shame I was not reviewing this flight for The Points Guy as I boarded first and had plenty of opportunities for photos!

45H (the first row aisle seat) had so much leg room!

45H had tons of leg room! The seat was really wide, so having a seat with larger, immovable arm rests wasn’t an issue.

As on other recent JAL flights, the seats on this 767-300 were hard and promoted slouching. But JAL is still the best economy product I’ve experienced yet!

Push back was right on schedule at 11:20am. I noticed that the ground and cargo crew were all standing in a line waving goodbye to our aircraft as we pulled away after push back. I’ll have to pay attention to see if this happens on every JAL departure from NRT.

There was a long line of planes waiting to take off, so we were not actually airborne until 11:50am.

The take off was a bit rough, as we had trouble keeping the plane straight on the runway. But everything was fine once we were in the air.

JAL economy departure meal

I tried the JAL special kiwi drink, and found it to be surprisingly good. For dinner I opted for the ‘western chicken and noodles’. I came with a salad, roll, and three little dishes. One dish was a fruit salad, but I’m not sure what the other two were. One seemed to be a vegetable dish and the other one tasted starchy yet sweet. Dessert – cookies and cream ice cream – came shortly after the meal was served.

The cabin lighting dimmed substantially after dinner and flight attendants asked everyone to close their window shades. I stayed up and worked on my laptop. There was no self serve snack or drink area, but flight attendants came through a couple times with orange juice.

The pre-arrival snack was a cheese bread with juice or tea. The cheese bread was somewhat tasty, but not great.

After the snack, I became really tired and struggled to wake up for landing. But the landing was smooth at least!