Having come in the previous evening and overnighted at a nearby hotel, now I am back at Incheon Airport for the final hop to Beijing.

This Boeing 777, only a few months old, will take me there. Despite the nonstop turbulence headaches from the previous day's flight, Asiana Airlines is nevertheless impressive, as is Incheon Airport, only 18 months old at the time.

Note that there is no Star Alliance insignia. While Asiana's entry into Star Alliance had been confirmed, it did not go live until 2003. At this time Asiana continued to count American Airlines and Cathay Pacific as marketing partners.

On this trip I would find that Asiana's official name in Chinese was 韩亚航空 (Korea Asia Airlines), rather than any attempt at phonetically writing "Asiana" out. This is in keeping with Chinese airline naming conventions, where the airline's nationality is stated first and the name of the airline itself is translated into Chinese word equivalents if possible. A similar example would be 美國聯合航空 ("America Union Airlines") which is the official Chinese name of United Airlines.