Double daily Korean Air flights celebrated at YVR party

The recent introduction of a second daily flight to the Vancouver-Seoul route by Korean Air provided the opportunity to look back on the long history of the airline’s presence in YVR – and to have a big, pre-Christmas party.

About 100 invited guests came to the Fairmont Pacific Rim on Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet to take in both modern and traditional dance performances, enjoy gourmet meals and reflect on the fact that Korean Air had been operating flights to/from YVR since 1988. Helping lead the celebrations was Jin Ho Lee, the senior VP at the Korean Air regional headquarters for the Americas in Los Angeles. He made the trip to Vancouver for the pre-Christmas party and took the stage in the large function room with Douglas Yiu, the Canada regional sales manager for Korean Air.

The double-daily selection of flights to Seoul from YVR includes the possibility of flying onboard the airline’s new Boeing 787-10 aircraft. This is the pride of the Korean Air fleet and offers a host of useful amenities. These include, for example, an economy class seat pitch of between 33 and 34 inches.

“People ask why we don’t have a premium economy class, and the answer is that our economy class cabin is so good that we don’t need it,” said Yiu.

Bringing more Canadians to Korea

Making air travel on KE even more attractive over the next six months for business class passengers is the offer of free WiFi. That offer will be in place until May 2025. The Vancouver-Seoul route has been amongst the most successful for Korean Air, establishing YVR as a North American hub for travel to and from Asia. The addition of more flights confirms the airline’s goal to bring more Canadians to Korea, and then onward using the airline’s extensive network in Asia.

For instance, the airline operates flights to 14 cities in Japan alone, including Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Niigata, Okayama, Sapporo, Aomori, Komatsu, Okinawa, Nagasaki and Kumamoto.

China is another major part of the route map, with 22 cities served by KE, as is Southeast Asia, with stops in Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Manila, Cebu, Singapore, Jakarta, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Yangon and Phnom Penh. “Now is the time to head to Asia, the airfares are very good,” said Yiu.

Describing the reasons for a vacation visit to Korea were reps from the Korea Tourism Organization, including Seong Min Son, the deputy director of the KTO for Canada, and David Han of destination reps Reach Global Marketing.

Han took the stage to describe some of the attractions, including lesser-known ones like the cities of Jeonju and Gyeongju, both of which are at least 1,000 years old and rich with historic sites.

For those with part of a day to set aside for touring while in transit, a selection of (mostly) free Korea transit tours are offered. These run for between one and five hours, and cover everything from markets and temples to historic palaces, and even the famous DMZ region, marking the division between North Korea and South Korea. There is a fee of $4 to take the five-hour DMZ tour. koreanair.com; visitkorea.or.kr