During our five-week honeymoon to East Asia, we had the chance to hop around Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea on a few different budget airlines. While I’m no stranger to the European budget airline giants like RyanAir and Transavia, it was my first time trying out airlines like VietJet Air and Jeju Air — and we took Jeju Air from Taipei, Taiwan, to Seoul, South Korea.
Here’s what it was like to fly with Jeju Air and my overall Jeju Air review.
Booking Your Jeju Air Tickets
Jeju Air is a South Korean budget airline based in Jeju City, Jeju Island. So yeah, that checks out. (While we did visit Jeju Island on our South Korea trip, we actually didn’t fly with Jeju Air to or from Jeju Island!)
You should be able to book flights with them through your favorite airline booking platform, such as Booking.com, but we booked our tickets through the CapitalOne portal, knowing that it would earn us 10x points with our purchase.
Our flight was in September, but we’d booked our flights back in January, and it cost about $100 USD per person direct to Seoul from Taipei, which I thought was very reasonable. At the time, I didn’t remember seeing any information about what bags were or weren’t included with our tickets. I figured I’d just deal with it when the time came. During my one other experience flying with budget airlines in Asia back in 2018, I remembered that my carry-on bag had been included with my ticket, so I hoped that would be the case again.
Note: I am reading now that there may be different fare classes available, each of which comes with its own baggage allowance, though I did not see that as an option at the time we were booking. Or maybe I just ignored it.
Jeju Air Check-in Logistics
During our first short-haul flight of this trip, from Osaka to Taipei with VietJet Air, I’d realized you can’t really check-in online for these international flights. I guess I was too accustomed to checking in online and getting my boarding pass on my phone when I’m traveling between U.S. states or the Schengen zone.
So we decided to arrive at the airport in Taipei three hours in advance just to make sure we’d have plenty of time to check in at the desk. However, the bus we took from Taipei Station to the airport had other plans (namely, to get stuck in traffic) so we only arrived about two and a half hours early, which was plenty of time. 🙂
And luckily, there wasn’t much of a line at the Jeju Air desk. We only had to wait in line for a couple of minutes before we were called up.
We weren’t sure what would happen next. Matt and I both travel with two backpacks, a smaller bag and a larger carry-on sized backpack, and on our previous flight, we’d had to gate-check both of our carry-on bags because our total weight was way over the allowed carry-on limit for VietJet Air. But at the Jeju Air desk, the worker said “Do you only have backpacks?” and we said yes. She printed our boarding passes, and that was that! The whole thing took less than a minute.
There weren’t any special bag tags for “approved” carry-on items and they didn’t weigh any of our stuff at any point. I think they saw that we were able to carry everything we had and assumed it wasn’t too heavy. 🤷♀️ And best of all, we didn’t have to pay extra for checking our bags or anything.
Security at Taipei Airport
Security wasn’t as fast and easy as it is at other airports — and Taipei doesn’t seem to have the new technology where you don’t have to take out your electronics. But it still didn’t take more than 10 minutes to wait in line and get all the way through.
Also, in case you didn’t know, you can take food through security. (As long as it’s not liquid.) I’ve been carrying around a big plastic bag full of gluten-free snacks for me and not only does security not care, but gate agents never say anything about it to you either.
Jeju Air Experience
Jeju Air seemed to board the plane back-to-front, for the most part, which meant that it was a lot faster getting to our seats than it normally would have been! I think every airline should do this. It’s so much easier when there aren’t a bunch of people in the aisle ahead of you, stopping to put their bags in the overhead bins.
It was only a 2.5 hour flight, and I slept most of the way. I felt like there was a pretty good amount of legroom too, especially compared to VietJet Air (which I felt had below-average legroom). The only bad thing that happened on the flight was that we hit a hard period of turbulence about 45 minutes before landing, which I know isn’t anyone’s fault, but it woke me up and scared me a little.
But we arrived in Seoul safe and sound, a few minutes earlier than scheduled.
Jeju Air Value
Flying with Jeju Air was a good experience and provided great value! The tickets were already a decent price, and the fact that we didn’t have to pay to check our carry-ons at the last minute made it even better.
After our flight was over, I was actually kind of sad that we weren’t flying with them again on this trip, because I knew what to expect (and knew I wouldn’t have to pay extra for anything). But it’s a lesson learned — even if a Jeju Air ticket is slightly more expensive than on another airline, you may still need to pay for your bag on the other airline.
Key Takeaway: Jeju Air Review
Jeju Air baggage allowance: One personal item + one carry-on bag (max weight 10kg) though this may not be enforced
Anyway, those are my thoughts about my experience with Jeju Air! Of course, your experience may vary and I can’t promise you’ll have the same positive experience that we did.
Have you ever flown with Jeju Air, or are you thinking about it? Let me know in the comments.
-Cathy
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