Tokyo Narita Airport is home to one of the only two lounges operated by China Airlines outside Taiwan (the other being in Bangkok). The lounge services the four daily China Airlines flights from Narita, making it quite impressive that they elected to operate their own lounge.

Lounge Access Rules

The China Airlines Lounge is accessible to any SkyPriority passenger flying on a SkyTeam member airline. In practice, this limits eligible passengers to those flying in Business Class on China Airlines and China Eastern Airlines. Other SkyTeam airlines operate from Narita Terminal 1, and in Narita, it is not possible to go to another terminal just to use a lounge. Similarly, SkyTeam Elite Plus members flying on China Airlines and China Eastern are also entitled to access the lounge. Finally, this lounge is also the contract lounge for Business Class and Star Alliance Gold passengers flying on Air India from Narita Airport.

Lounge Location

After passing immigration, the China Airlines Lounge is located on Level 2, one floor down from the Departures Level. There are a pair of escalators to access Level 2, located just behind the Chanel fragrance store, towards the direction of Gate 71. On the escalator landing on Level 2, the Cathay Pacific Lounge should be visible – from there, make a U-turn and the China Airlines Lounge should be visible.

China Airlines Lounge

Right by the door is a reception desk, where my lounge invitation was taken and my boarding pass was scanned. The friendly lounge agent also advised that a boarding call will be made before my flight, which I’d say is expected from an outstation lounge.

Immediately to the right of the reception desk is a dedicated area for Paragon and Emerald China Airlines Dynasty Flyer members. For one, I was very impressed that China Airlines has such an area for its top-tier members in a lounge outside its hub. In fact, this is a pattern I keep seeing in all China Airlines-operated lounges I’ve been to – they sure seem to treat their own frequent flyers very well!

From there, there is a short corridor leading to the Business Class Lounge, which I will be covering in this review. Also located here are the toilets and a baggage storage area, the latter of which didn’t seem to be in use.

Right at the entrance to the Business Class Lounge section is this beautiful Chinese vase on display. The vase is encased in an acrylic display case with a description that says it is handmade. Cool!

To the right of that is also a random plate on display in a small cubicle, akin to a telephone booth in a JAL Lounge. It doesn’t have a door, so I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a telephone booth or…?

Lounge Seating and Amenities

The Business Class section of the lounge consists of one long room with a multitude of chairs. It’s not very creative as far as lounge seating arrangements go, but it looked clean, orderly, and professional.

All the chairs looked identical, though the pairs in the centre section do provide a bit more privacy due to the partition screens separating each pair. Whilst they looked a bit old, I found the chairs to be very comfortable to sit on, thankfully. On the separating console is also a small desk lamp that could be switched on or off.

On the console wall of each pair of chairs is a small metal compartment, which slides open to reveal a power outlet. I’m not sure why they made this design choice, but it looked quite sleek.

Along the interior wall is also a long row of identical chairs, without much in terms of privacy. These seem to be geared more towards solo travellers since each chair has its own table. Power outlets are similarly available along the wall but in irregular intervals.

There is also a row of seven in a desk-like setting by the window, similar to those found at virtually every Japan Airlines Lounge. The window by these chairs is also the only one in the lounge and offers a rather limited view. Sadly, the chairs here are placed very close to one another, and there are only three power outlets to share between the nine chairs.

Business Centre

To the left of the entrance is a small business centre area, which looked gutted out. There were neither computers nor printers nor were there even chairs! As such, I have no idea what purpose it serves nowadays, though it would’ve been a nice work area had there been chairs.

Baggage Storage

As mentioned previously, there is a small baggage storage area in the corridor near the reception. Like the confusing business centre setup, however, the baggage storage didn’t seem to serve a proper function. First, it does not feature lockers, like at other lounges. Instead, there were open and exposed racks, which looked quite flimsy for a cabin-sized carry-on. Furthermore, the racks are populated with boxes covered in the airline’s economy blankets… which was even more confusing. However, there weren’t any signs saying that the area is out of use, so I’m not sure what was going on here.

Dining

The China Airlines Lounge has a buffet spread on one side, featuring mostly light food options. The spread reminds me a bit of a cafeteria, although the quality was unexpectedly quite good. On the island counters are the food options, whereas the counters opposite feature the drinks.

In terms of cold food, there were first some packaged ham and cheese croissants, along with chocolate cookies and arare snack mix packets on one side.

On the other side is also a cabinet filled with various pastries, which honestly didn’t look very appetising. Next to that are a couple hot water dispensers for the instant noodles and instant miso soup packets. They specifically had Cup Noodles in original and seafood flavours, as well as Nissin Tempura Soba. Whilst I wasn’t keen on that, I noticed that the noodles were very popular among the lounge patrons.

Outside the instant hot food, the other hot dishes at this lounge were ones that are palatable to both Japanese and Taiwanese tastes. There is a single bain-marie, which featured small portions of fried rice (chahan), yakisoba (fried noodles) shumai (Chinese prawn dumplings), chimaki (glutinous rice dumpling in bamboo leaf), and a momomanjyu (peach-shaped red bean buns).

Having not had breakfast, I sampled a few of their food offerings, including the odd-looking cup of yakisoba and a few dumplings. The shumai and chimaki tasted very nice, although the momomanjyu was drier than the Sahara desert! The yakisoba tasted okay although it was sadly very oily. The packaged Morinaga Chocolate Cookies, however, were really good and high-quality! You could even say I ate one too many after two hours in the lounge… 😛

Drinks

In the drinks section, available are a coffee machine and a soft drinks dispenser. Interestingly, the lounge uses mugs and cups that were probably used in flight at some point. They are bone china too, which I found to be quite impressive.

Next to this was a rather impressive selection of liquor and wines. Whilst they were all nothing special, I really appreciated the great selection and variety of drinks on offer! This selection is even better than those available at their Taipei Taoyuan Airport lounges, which says a lot.

They’ve also got two beer machines, which dispense Kirin Heartland Beer and Kirin Ichiban Shibori. Next to them is the chiller, which houses the beer glasses. There were a couple more bottles of wine and Japanese liquor, in addition to apple juice and milk. Cups of fruit and sticks of butter were also provisioned in there.

Toilets

In the corridor between the lounge and the reception are the bathrooms, which are gender segregated. When I visited, it was spotlessly clean and very well-kept. There weren’t any showers, although I didn’t expect one to be available anyway.

Overall

I was very pleasantly surprised by the China Airlines Lounge Tokyo Narita. For an outstation airport lounge, I felt that the space was really quite nice and comfortable. For one, it definitely exceeded my expectations of a dingy and stuffy room based on seeing limited pictures online. I’d even say that this lounge is nicer than Garuda Indonesia’s flagship lounge in Jakarta! Whilst it definitely isn’t amongst the world’s best lounges, it does its job very well. Whilst the food options could be expanded a bit, I found the space to be well-designed and the seating to be comfortable. Overall, well done China Airlines!

Read more from this trip here!