Flying the Family Friendly Skies with JAL

    My family and I had the pleasure of flying JAL last month and I have to say that they are my preferred airline for flying into or out of Japan. The seats tend to be wider and more comfortable than ANA where domestic travel is concerned and on the international side, there's no matching their service, even in economy class which is the only way I fly. 

When you're travelling as a family, sitting with your child is important. JAL gets this. Other websites don't always.

    One difficulty we had was caused by a glitch from the website where we bought our tickets, which was not JAL. I do not know if this happens when you buy from JAL directly, but after our tickets were purchased with all relevant information like ages included, I was horrified to find my five-year-old daughter's seat had been chosen by the algorithm to be across the plane from me. As we were the only two flying together for that leg of the trip, it was vital that we be together and there were seats available together, but the computer had other ideas apparently. The great thing is that this is an easy fix. Logging in with your ticket information on the JAL website, you can select (or re-select) your seats as need be. Keep in mind that some things do change last minute, but this gives you a better chance of sitting where you need to be. For international flights, this link would be useful. For domestic, this one is better.

    After this fix, we had no problems getting on the plane and sitting together. At least that was true until we tried to make our return trip with my husband in tow. Since my husband's tickets had to be purchased separately due to alternative flight dates and again from the same non-JAL website, his seats wound up completely separate from my daughter and I. Previous to our departure, I would have sworn that I had fixed that and sat us all together using the same technique I had to ensure my kid would not be a plane away from me for our whole time in the air, but something had not connected and our seats were quite separate.

Does she look like someone who should be flying alone? I don't think so.

    My husband did not want to raise a fuss, but I didn't want to sit through a family plane trip being the only one with our kid and wondering how my husband was doing the whole time, so I thought to ask the flight attendant who was working at the desk where we checked in for our flight. She was more than happy to not only seat us together but give us the bulk-head space, with the three of us centrally seated in a three-person row with tons of leg space in front. We were overjoyed and went to sit and wait for our section to be called, thinking the kindness that was already so much more than we had expected had reached its conclusion. When they called for those with difficulties or small children to board, my husband and I pondered if our kid was young enough for that to mean us and decided that we were probably fine, only to have the same flight attendant come and ask us specifically to go ahead and board the flight. We got in and got settled before the little one ran out of steam, which meant for a much happier flight for all of us.

    Thanks to their great customer service and thoughtfulness, JAL will always be my family's favorite airline.

This post is supported by Japan Airlines (JAL), one of City-Cost's Supporters helping City-Cost bloggers to enjoy life in Japan and engage in new experiences.