Air Koryo is the name of the national carrier of the Democratic Republic of Korea (better known as North Korea) and practically is the only transportation system available if you wish to visit, for business or leisure, this country unless you are ready to take a long trip on board of a not really confortable train from Beijing, China to Pyongyang.
Air Koryo is a name adopted in recent years as in the past the carrier name was CAAK (Civic Aviation Association of Korea).
New name but very old fleet composed by a vintage collection
of Russian aircrafts. Four Ilyushin 62, two Tupolev 134, two Tupolev 154, two Ilyushin 18, eight Antonov 24. Their average age is around 30 years.
Due to the embargo and the poor economy in the country Air Koryo has great difficulties to arrange spare parts for its aircraft, so recently they have been forced to reduce the number of flights and destinations. Right now Air Koryo flies only to Beijing, Macau, Bangkok, Shenyang (China) and Vladivostok (Russia). In the past Moscow, Sofia and Berlin were included.
A month ago I went, with one of my Italian customers, to Pyongyang (the capital city of North Korea) on a business trip. We made our reservation through a travel agent in Beijing, travel agent specialized in organizing trips to North Korea. We got two Business Class tickets for 243 US Dollars (be careful, don’t pay in Euro as Air Koryo exchange Dollars to Euro with ratio 1 to 1….and note that it is the same in the hotels or restaurant within Korea, so bring with you a lot of cash in Dollars because credit cards are not accepted at all in North Korea). On leaving Pyongyang a 10 US Dollars departure tax is applied.
So we flew Lufthansa from Milan to Beijing, via Frankfurt, connecting to Pyongyang with Air Koryo.
A 1963 Ilyushin 62 is our aircraft. The cabin is fairly clean. The seats are comfortable with enough space for our legs (we are shorther than 6’), in Economy class too (I had a look during the flight). The F/As (flight attendants) are kind and smiling but their English is very poor. Before take-off they distribute Chinese and Korean newspaper using a two-wheels chart similar to the one used in our warehouse to move boxes. During our flight from Beijing to Pyongyang we get a fairly good curry rice with minced meat (may be mouton but not sure as there was no written menu) and a plate of fresh fruit along with a good Korean beer. On our way back the cheese omelette was very similar to polystyrene and the side sausages were unedible.
Flying time from Beijing to Pyongyang is only one hour and forty minutes. We are lucky for this as for safety Air Koryo has an extreme low level. The safety demonstration, performed by the F/As, is reduced to the use of the safety belts. You can carry on board any quantity of hand baggage and finally most of them are stored on the floor of the aisle. The curtain that separates the Business section from the Economy is closed even during take-off and landing. But the worst is not yet discovered. We are seated in the first row, just in front of the cockpit. The cockpit crew arrives. They are three pilots and each one has several plastic bag full of duty free items, most of them are bottles of vodka. They enter the cockpit and before take their seats, they open one bottle of vodka and drink directly from it. Then we are pushed-back and we are ready for take-off. The aircraft increases the speed and then lift-up and in less than one minute we are airborne. Something wrong? Yes during the take-off, and then during landing, the F/As stand-up like they are travelling by bus or underground rather than by air. We are shocked and we try to understand how they can react in case of emergency.
Finally, if we put aside the safety, two enjoyable flights. We left and arrived on time.
Honestly I’m not in position to suggest this airline but if you need to reach Pyongyang we have only two choices: 100 minutes with Air Koryo or around 23 hours on hard-seat train.
Ah… I forgot… Air Koryo is a smoking airlines. You can smoke from boarding to deplaning, take-off and landing included.
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good review- this explains why Air Koryo is on the blacklist of airlines banned from landing in the UK (and I think in the whole EU)
torr 04.05.2005 13:58
What a fascinating review. Fortunately Pyongyang is about bottom on my "must visit" list of places, so maybe I won't need to rely on the vodka-swilling crew. Duncan
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