With the amount it now costs to travel, especially by plane, most of us want to ensure we get the highest quality possible.
While you’re supposedly always safer in a plane, than you are in a typical car, being up to 42,000 feet in the air can feel a lot more comfortable if you’ve booked a high-quality seat with a high-quality airline.
YouTuber and self-referred ‘AV Geek’ Sam Chui, however, wanted to do things a little differently. Instead, the content creator set his sights on North Korea’s ‘one-star airline.’
The Air Koryo airline has a long-standing history and has spent a grand total of over 50 years in flight. However, is not your run-of-the-mill, typical airline.
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First of all, you can’t get a ticket online like you can for the likes of easyJet and British Airways. Instead, you have to join an organised tour in order to pick up tickets.
Additionally, instead of stamping your passport, like with other flights, Air Koryo gives out an old-school paper North Korean visa.
But what sets Air Koryo apart the most, is that, instead of a modern aircraft, buying a ticket may result in you flying on an old former Soviet Union aircraft. An aircraft so outdated it’s not even available in Russia itself.
Sam Chui discovered this when he first flew with the airline while travelling from Beijing to North Korea. As outlined in his YouTube video, the creator set off in a Soviet Ilyushin IL-62, a Soviet long-range aircraft conceived way back in the 1960s.
The old-school nature of the aircraft was on full display the second he entered the Soviet aircraft. As seen in the video, the interior looks like something you’d expect to see out of an episode of Mad Men, or worse yet, something that can only be witnessed in the interior of your Grandma’s house.
Chui also showed off just how loud the vintage aircraft got, which was ‘screaming loud’ as he sat on the back row during take off.
After landing, Chui was given a glimpse of the retro green-coloured cockpit which takes a whopping 5 technicians to fly. Instead of your typical modern day plane taking a main and co-pilot, the Ilyushin IL-62 requires at least one engineer, one radio controller and a navigator.
Even more bizarrely, after passing immigration and customs, Chui and the other passengers had to forgo custody of their smartphones. These wouldn’t be given back, until the time that Chui returned to depart from North Korea.
The Soviet Ilyushin IL-62 wasn’t the only Air Koryo aircraft flown by Chui. In the 18-minute video, the YouTube shares he also flew in an Ilyushin IL-18, another Soviet aircraft, and a more modern Tupolev 204 and Antonov 148.
In 2014, Chui returned to North Korea via air Koryo, but on the aforementioned Tupolev 204, a modern Russian twin-engine jet plane, and an on the Antonov 148, both more modern planes than the vintage Ilyushin IL-62.
Despite Air Koryo's 'one-star- reputation, Chui insists in the video description that the flights had 'more leg room' and wider seats than most other airlines.
He also states that customer service was 'better than United or RyanAir', showing that you should never judge a book, or in this case a plane, by its cover.