Korean Air has a new look, new food and new amenities

For Korean Air, it is out with the outdated and in with the brand new.

South Korea’s flag service unveiled its first main model redesign since 1984, alongside a brand new livery, new inflight eating and upgraded onboard experiences throughout numerous cabins.

The airline shared a simplified, muted tackle its iconic taegeuk emblem at a media occasion attended by TPG at Gimpo Worldwide Airport (GMP) close to Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday.

The brand new emblem trades the earlier iteration’s blue, pink and white hues for a extra minimalist, subdued design. The emblem, Korean Air defined in a press release, is impressed by a conventional Korean hat dance known as “Sangmo.”

The simplified, trendy branding was on full show when the airline unveiled its new blue-and-white livery on a Boeing 787-10. The simplified taeguek image dominates the aircraft’s fin, whereas “KOREAN,” written with “refined brushstroke-inspired particulars” and “clean curves and open connections,” takes up the entrance part of the plane. A brand new metallic paint makes the airline’s signature sky-blue coloring really feel extra luxurious, the airline says, whereas a flowing, curved line dancing on the underside of the fuselage rounds out the outside adjustments coming to Korean’s fleet.

Although the livery is void of pink, the airline’s outdated model colours will nonetheless be on show in a brand new approach on airport check-in screens, SkyPass playing cards and on-line. They will even be seen in revolutionary new methods all through airports, in Korean Air lounges and on board flights within the close to future.

Korean Air additionally unveiled its new inflight and lounge eating experiences, crafted by Sdkyeong Kim, the Korean chef behind fashionable Seoul eating places Cesta and Hue135.

“We realized we wanted to vary,” David Pacey, government vp of inflight service and lounges, mentioned throughout a press convention highlighting the brand new menu. “It was time for us to do one thing totally different.”

New dishes embody salmon bibimbap, spicy stir-fried octopus with pork, tofu pad thai, spicy eggplant stir-fry, and rose pasta in economic system class, and octopus nurungji rice, beef brisket bibimbap and royal sizzling pot — served on new china — in premium cabins.

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And, Pacey highlighted, the airline is introducing a Korean staple on board for the very first time throughout all courses: kimchi.

First-class passengers can take pleasure in upgraded bedding and slippers by Italian model Frette, a staple of luxurious inns, and new Air Coil mattresses from Eco World. Firstclass and enterprise class, or Status, because it’s recognized on Korean Air, may even take pleasure in new amenity kits from Graff, a British luxurious model.

These new providers will launch Wednesday on 10 long-haul routes, together with New York, Paris and London flights. All of Korean’s long-haul routes can be upgraded by June, with medium- and short-haul routes becoming a member of the fray in September.

Final yr, the airline launched Prestige 2.0 business-class suites.

The brand new model identification and inflight upgrades come as Korean and Asiana Airways, South Korea’s two main airways, proceed to work by way of a major merger that was finalized in late 2024 following years of international regulatory speedbumps. However, with the inexperienced mild now secured, the merger strengthens Korean’s place as South Korea’s dominant model — which is getting the replace as the corporate prepares to fold Asiana, at the moment a subsidiary, into the airline following a two-year integration course of. Nonetheless, Korean Air’s new model identification feels void of any items of Asiana, a model that may stop to exist as soon as that two-year interval is over, in accordance with The Korea Times.

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