Asiana Business Class Review: LAX to Seoul to Hong Kong

Asiana’s hilariously named Quadra Smartium Business Class was a product I really wanted to try. It’s received great reviews, plus I’ve never flown Asiana before and was looking forward to experiencing an airline that’s won so many awards recently (as they make you well aware of in their TV commercials).

Update, October 2026

Asiana Airlines is being folded into Korean Air: the Asiana brand is scheduled to disappear on December 17, 2026, when Asiana also leaves Star Alliance (LoyaltyLobby, May 2026). The booking method, award prices and onboard products below are from 2012.

This review used to be three posts: the flight from Los Angeles to Seoul, the Asiana lounge at Incheon, and the flight on to Hong Kong. I’ve combined them here, and the old links lead to this page.

Los Angeles to Seoul in Quadra Smartium Business Class

How I Booked It

First things first – how did I book my ticket? This one was a bit interesting, actually. I had a stash of AviancaTaca miles that I’d bought at a great price of just 1.5 cents each. As Gary at View from the Wing pointed out in this post, you can use a Cash & Points option to book your flights, which essentially allows you to buy additional points at around 1.3 cents per point. That’s exactly what I did (see an example below).

Before I could book my flight, I needed to know what and when it was available. Asiana has two daily flights from LAX-ICN, an afternoon and a night flight. The night flight is on a two-cabin 777 configured with the Quadra Smartium fully-flat Business Class, while the afternoon flight is a 747 with three classes and a Business Class with the old, angled lie-flat product. My go-to for Star Alliance searches is United.com since their award search is easy to use and usually pretty accurate. I didn’t always see availability there for my flight – Asiana must have continuously released a few seats at a time because there were a few occasions where I decided not to book and found out the space was gone just a a few hours later.

Instead, I decided to put my Expert Flyer membership to use. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a website through which you can set up alerts for when a particular award seat becomes available (among many other features). I set up alerts for these flights on all the days I was willing to travel. I finally got an email that one was available, so I decided to go straight to AviancaTaca’s award website to book my flight.

As I mentioned I did the Cash and Points option. I mentioned I paid for the points, so it’s important to make the distinction that this was not a free flight. I paid for it, but the $819.36 I paid would normally be about the equivalent of a one-way Economy price. I essentially got a Business Class seat for the same price as Economy, because I did a little research to figure out the best way to redeem this award.

Now…on to the flight review!

The Seat

As soon as I got on board, I was offered a water or orange juice and was referred to as “Mr.” Travel Summary. There was plenty of overhead space since the seating is a 1-2-1 staggered layout. If you take a look at the seat map, you’ll see that half the window seats have the seat portion right against the cabin, while the other half have seats near the aisle. I chose a seat that was close to the windows because it gives a much more private feeling. Either way you will enjoy your flight.

The seat was pretty nice. It was a little firm and a little narrow, but still very comfortable. I will say this though – if you’re on the heavy side, you may have a tougher time on this seat. Also, I’ve read that side sleepers have an awkward time sleeping because the way the bed is angled to the side. As I mentioned, the seat is a little narrow so you might have an awkward sleep if your curl your legs up so that your knees are bent.

Dinner

I had dinner before going to bed. The flight attendant lowered my tray table for me and placed the tablecloth on it. When she laid it down she noticed there was a small black mark in the middle of it that she couldn’t rub off, so she pulled it off and put a new one on. The little things matter!

I was determined to try the Korean meal on this flight, and thankfully it was something I liked. I started with shrimp with a pine nut dressing, moved on to bibimbap as my main course, and finished off with fruit and cookies. The food was delicious. The only real gripe I had was with the drinks. I had a diet coke, and the glass was so small that I finished it before even getting close to finishing my meal. It wasn’t refilled until I asked since the flight attendants didn’t really check-in during the meal except to pick up plates. Another small issue was that it took quite a bit of time between courses. Overall, dinner took over an hour from start to finish. Maybe I was just eager to go to bed since it was approaching 3am at this point.

Sleep and Breakfast

After dinner I decided to take a nap. It’s a pretty long flight from Los Angeles to Korea so I was hoping the bed would be comfortable enough that I’d be able to get a decent amount of rest. Sure enough, I slept an amazing 7.5 hours, waking up just once to go to the restroom in between! That ended up being the perfect amount of sleep, because it was time for breakfast just a little after waking up and about 2.5 hours remaining in the flight.

For breakfast I decided to go with the Western option, and it was pretty average. Breakfast was the same as dinner in terms of timing. It took 20 minutes from the time I got my fruit plate to the time I got my croissant, then another 15 minutes to get my French toast.

Bottom Line

All things considered, this was one of the better flights I’ve ever taken. Getting 7.5 hours on this flight was so important because it ended up helping with my jet lag. My flight left at night, I slept 7.5 hours, and when we landed in Korea it was about 6am. If you ask me, that’s perfect because all I have to do was stay up all day and I was good to go with no jet lag!

I have to admit that I expected a bit more service-wise. There are about 24 Business Class seats so there are definitely a lot of people to take care of, but there were many instances in which a simple check-in would have gone a long way for me (such as to get a refill on my diet coke!). But I must say, the movie selection was amazing and the TV was large enough that you could easily enjoy whatever you were watching (though definitely nowhere near the biggest in the sky). I would HIGHLY recommend taking this flight on your way to Korea, as long as you can guarantee you’re getting the Quadra Smartium seats!

I’ll leave you with the full menu and a few other shots of the cabin in case you’re interested. If you have any questions, just let me know and I’ll help the best I can!

The Asiana Business Class Lounge at Seoul Incheon

I landed in Seoul feeling well rested thanks to my fight in Asiana’s Quadra Smartium Business Class, but the breakfast before landing left me a bit hungry. I had a few hours before my flight to Hong Kong and headed straight for the Asiana Business Class Lounge, which is on the second floor of the terminal.

Note that there are separate First and Business Class Lounges for Asiana at ICN. I wondered whether or not my Star Alliance Gold status would get me in to the First Class Lounge, but the Business Class Lounge attendants confirmed that I’d only have access to the Business one. Not a big loss. I would have had access to this lounge regardless of my Star Alliance status since my award ticket was in Business Class.

The Lounge

It was early morning, so it was a little quiet in the lounge when I got there. You’ll have to forgive me for the lack of pictures and the lack of quality pictures, because one of the lounge workers was insistent that pictures were not allowed (I was warned twice). I didn’t feel like getting kicked out of the lounge so I tried to be discreet and not go overboard.

The lounge felt and looked like a library; it was very quiet and there were bookshelves all over the place, and plenty of seating. Unfortunately I couldn’t get any pictures of the food area because of the aforementioned warnings I received, but you can at least see the general size of it in the third picture below (it takes up the entire far wall).

Breakfast

Breakfast was set up with both Western and Asian options. I wasn’t too hungry since I had the breakfast on the plane, but I definitely did want something more. I opted for some scrambled eggs with croissants, both of which were as good as you can expect them to be. There was also a salad bar, noodle and rice options, and other small items like yogurts and fruits.

After checking a few emails I decided to walk around to see what else the lounge offers. There were several showers available, but they had to be reserved before you’d be allowed to use them. I wasn’t there long enough to make use of one, though it would have been nice after a 13 hours flight. There were also several rooms with massage chairs, most of them providing a good view of the airport for plane-watching.

And I have to take my obligatory picture of the high-tech toilet seat, at least when I’m in the more advanced countries in Asia. Again, didn’t make use of it, but this time it wasn’t due to time…I’m pretty intimidated by these things. What if you push the wrong button and it sprays back at you or something?

It was time to head to my next flight after this last picture, so I headed out. Again, sorry for not getting more/better pictures of this lounge, but I was severely limited with the lady practically following me around. Plenty of other bloggers have reviewed the same lounge so feel free to use Google to find a more comprehensive review!

Seoul to Hong Kong in Business Class

After a short stop at the Asiana Business Class Lounge at ICN, I was ready to depart on the flight to my final destination. The flight from ICN-HKG is roughly the equivalent of a domestic flight for us in the US, so it wasn’t a 3-cabin plane. Instead, the A330-300 was a two-cabin plane with an Economy and Business Class. Still, it would win hands down against any domestic flight in the states.

Boarding and the Seat

Boarding had already begun as I arrived to the gate, but that just meant the Business Class line was empty. I walked straight in and took the first of two jetways on to the plane (the second was for Economy Class boarding). The layout was a slightly staggered 2-2-2 configuration and the seats were angled lie-flat seats. For those of you that don’t know, that just means that while the seat does recline to become completely flat, it does so at an angle so that your head is resting higher than your feet.

The seats were pretty comfortable but nothing special. Each seat had power outlets and the standard remote for the in-flight entertainment system. The TV was pretty standard, and there were plenty of movie selections just as there were on the LAX-ICN flight.

The most annoying thing about this flight was how loud the seat was. As you see above, there are tons of buttons and several configurations on how to move your seat around. Pushing any one of these buttons yielded an extremely loud mechanical sound. You could hear the gears turning and it was almost embarassingly loud. It literally sounded like you were deploying your own little landing gear at your seat…THAT’S how loud it was. Needless to say, after I got comfortable I didn’t touch it again unless absolutely necessary.

The Meal

Now on to the food. Upon boarding I was offered either water or juice. For all the people reading before departure, the flight attendants turned on the overhead lights for them – it’s just one of those service items that sets apart top airlines from the rest. Shortly after takeoff we were presented with brunch menus.

Even though I wasn’t very hungry after eating at the lounge, I decided I couldn’t pass up some free food…even if it was airplane food. I decided on the Stir Fried Beef Ribeye with bulgogi sauce and rice. I’m a big fan of bulgogi, so I was hoping it would be good.

The first plate was ham and a salad. I don’t care for ham so I didn’t bother trying it, and the salad was pretty standard with Italian dressing. Bread came a little later but was nothing to excited about.

The presentation of the main course was a little disappointing compared to the LAX-ICN flight, but I guess I shouldn’t really compare the two since this is considered a short-haul flight. I wasn’t expecting it to be good, and it definitely wasn’t fantastic, but it got the job done. The pieces of ribeye were sliced thinly but packed together, and the bulgogi sauce tastes like it always does. The meal was surprisingly filling, even considering I’d eaten a little just before.

The cheese and crackers were some of the worst I’ve ever had. I’m no cheese connoisseur, but this stuff tasted gross. The grapes had seeds in them which is always a little annoying when you’re not expecting them. It’s pretty hard to be dissatisfied with walnuts and cashews so no complaints there.

Thank goodness my palate was saved with the surprisingly good blueberry chocolate cake. The cake itself is like a yellow/pound cake, and the sauce on it is like a chocolate/blueberry mix. There was also some icing and a mini drop of whipped cream on top – both of which made it taste good without making it too sweet.

Arrival in Hong Kong

We touched down in Hong Kong after what felt like a quick 4 hours. I caught a glimpse of the Thai A380 at HKG, which is always a fun plane to see. After I stood up to gather my things I realized the Business Class cabin was only about 30% full, and the fact that there was no one sitting next to me made for a very comfortable flight. While the food wasn’t amazing, it’s better than anything you’d get on an American carrier and the main course and dessert actually tasted pretty good.

Also note that I booked this flight along with my LAX-ICN flight using my AviancaTaca miles, which you can read about in the first section above if you’re interested. Next up is my review of the Sheraton Hong Kong Hotel and Towers!

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