Updated October 24, 2021
Last time I started this Low Cost Carrier review series with Peach Airlines, so I will now continue with the next one - Skymark Airlines!
I recently took this flight between Okinawa and Kobe and Naha. At the time of writing this, Skymark is doing a huge campaign with Pokémon under “Flying Pikachu”. It’s a travel campaign in Okinawa with lots of Flying Pikachu memorabilia and decor. Anyway, point is - they have a plane that’s decorated with flying Pikachu!
They definitely had me there!
But even without the campaign, I will just say it now - Skymark is the best experience I’ve had in terms of LCCs, so I might not have much to say in the matter here haha.
To be honest, EVERYTHING ist pretty darn good.
Let's start at the beginning of the journey though. Upon arriving at the airport, I fully expected to just go to an automated check-in machine and you select you didn't bring dangerous shit, then the tickets just print out - and voila, TICKET. Your seats have been decided by god.
Nope. You can select your seats upon check-in, with no extra cost. We bought the lowest tier tickets and we were pleasantly surprised that ALMOST ALL the seats on the flight were available for the picking. The screen has the plane divided by three sections (front, middle, end) so it's sort of a nice visual to decide where in the plane you want to sit. It also clearly indicates with seats cannot be reclined so you can choose wisely. I really liked this!
And of course, best part - the tickets had flying pikachus on them! Teehee...
Now, onto the flight itself. My goodness, you guys - it was the most leg room I’ve ever had on LCC. I cannot remember a time when you can slip a handbag down under the seat in front of you without having to awkwardly maneuver your legs so you can do that. You really don't need to do that. There is so much space!!
What's even better is that they have charging ports! I took two flights with Skymark recently and they both had charging ports. Some might have them under your seat, while the planes equipped with newer seats have them in front of you. It's super convenient if you're taking a flight midday and you need to charge your phone before getting to your destination.
You can also ask for blankets if you need them to cover your legs or something! :)
Snacks are provide on all flights, and free drink service on slightly longer flights. Due to COVID19, they only serve hot coffee now. But I reckon more choices will return once the situation gets better later on. I'm also not really sure where the cutoff between yes drinks and no drinks is, but we did not get drinks during our one hour flight, while we did with a three-hour flight.
Oh, and they gave out masks along with the snacks.
If you wanted more of the KitKats and masks, they were available for the taking as you disembarked the flight. Which I thought was a nice touch!
The other thing I really liked was that if the flight is not crowded, the flight attendants seem to be able to use their discretion to move passengers into empty rows. This could possibly be more practiced due to COVID19, but we did see a cabin attendant approach a passenger asking him if he wanted to move to an empty row since they were available. He obliged. It seems like every group (whether solo, pairs or groups) were able to get their own row since our flight wasn't too crowded. And I thought was a good thing, especially during COVID19.
Another cute personal touch is that each plane has a cute little symbol on the wing. Some have stars, or hearts, or something else. I thought that was just kind of cute, and nice!
Pretty cute huh? ;)
Since there really isn't much bad, I renamed this section as just things to keep in mind and be aware of. As I did think there were some not-so-amazing downsides to taking Skymark.
We had a situation which caused a delay on our first flight. It's not so much the delay that makes it a bad thing. Delays happen ALL THE TIME. I get it. But the way they dealt with the delay made us really scratch our heads. Normally, a delay is caused by a previous delay from the same route. Or just something that happened in your own route. However, the delay that happened with our flight was because of another route, because they wanted to shorten the delay of another route. So now not one route, but two routes are delayed. I just found it is such a roundabout way of solving a problem that ended up causing more problems elsewhere, if you know what I mean. It seemed unnecessary.
I kind of get why it was done, but... hmm yeah. I suppose I wanted to share this as a caution that it might happen if you end up taking Skymark.
Anyway. Let's talk prices.
They are an LCC, but their flights aren’t always cheapest. There are some flights that might just cost a little less than an ANA or JAL flight, but there are also days where they might end up being much cheaper than Peach Airlines when they're on the pricier ends (think like 8000 yen range). So they are more of a mid-range type flight. Which makes sense given their service and in-flight comfort!
Bottom line is, definitely shop around before committing.
This isn't so much a bad thing either, very standard LCC practice - but their carry-on limit is 10KG. This was Peach's original limit as well, and plenty of budget airlines have the same limit. So keep that in mind!
One last thing that's very much just a personal pet peeve is that they only fly out of Kobe Airport. Getting to Kobe Airport can be a bit of a journey depending on where you live in Kansai. Nothing wrong with the airport itself. It's small, it's practical. But since I don't live in Kobe it is quite a distance for me. There are not express trains that directly go here like they do with KIX (the Haruka with JR). Getting here is pretty straightforward though. As long as you can get yourself to Sannomiya Station, the monorail is only about 20 minutes one-way.
Also one interesting thing I noticed was that the flight attendants can choose to wear pants. I’m not sure if it’s a seniority thing or not, but I definitely saw some ladies wear pants instead of the pencil skirts, which I thought was really nice.
Before I go: a personal tip if you're into exploring Airports - Skymark flies exclusively into its own airport if you're flying into Miyakojima. They don't use the Miyakojima Airport on the main island. Rather, they fly out of Shimojishima (it has bridge/road access from Miyako!) and ho boy... their airport can easily be a Resort Hotel of its own!
It's not a huge airport by any means, and the Arrivals building looks nowhere like this - but the Departures Hall is worth exploring if that's your thing. I might write a review of its own one day on it, but for now...
Thanks a lot for reading and see you next time!!
