This is definitely a bucket list trip for European travelers. One of the least known connections (and, for that matter, airlines) between the Old Continent and Asia is MIAT’s 767 hop from Frankfurt to Ulaanbaatar. The airline was happy to offer Aviacionline a roundtrip ticket — so we were one of the first Western websites to cover this product.

MIAT, anglicized acronym for Монголын Иргэний Агаарын Тээвэр (Mongol for Civil Aviation of Mongolia), is the country’s national airline, serving multiple destinations from its hub in the national capital, Ulaanbaatar.

In Europe, the airline connects Ulaanbaatar to Istanbul and Frankfurt, both three times a week with its single Boeing 767-300ER. Regionally, it connects Mongolia to major cities like Guangzhou, Seoul and Tokyo, with a fleet of Boeing 737-800.

As such, there is a lot of curiosity about this flag carrier, and as this is the only connection between Western Europe and Ulaanbaatar — and, for now, one of the easiest ways to get from the Americas to Mongolia — we thought it would be a great way to talk about MIAT’s overlooked product.

OM138 FRA-UBN

I arrived in Frankfurt with some hours to spare after a pleasant flight from Dublin with Aer Lingus — after Ryanair dropped out of the airport, it was an easy choice to make.

According to FlightRadar24, the inbound flight was on-time and, accordingly, check-in for the flight to Ulaanbaatar was already ongoing.

Major hubs are also a pain to navigate through, but you couldn’t beat this airline diversity anywhere else.

In just a few minutes we had our boarding passes in hand, and we faced no line since we were Business Class passengers.

Safety was also quite fast with fast-track, and after some 10 minutes walking we were in front of the lounge MIAT offers in Frankfurt — Primeclass.

The food selection was reasonable and we could get a beer (we were in Germany after all)! And the lounge was quite empty, so it was a pleasant experience.

In Frankfurt, lounges are located before the gates, and the gates have another safety check, so always make sure you spare some extra time to get to your gate.

It was a short turnaround in Frankfurt for our airplane, and there was a lady freaking out at the gate because she had lost something (we didn’t understand if it was her passport or her phone), but still, boarding began on time.

For our flight today, MIAT’s single Boeing 767-300ER: JU-1021. Named «Chinggis Khaan» after the most famous Mongolian of all time, it was delivered brand new to the airline on May 2013, according to Planespotters.net, and it has been operating for the company ever since.

And the cabin, after all, was well maintained, very clean and fresh.

MIAT’s Business class in their 767 has an odd configuration of 2-1-2, so if you’d like to have full aisle access, go in the middle.

As for Economy class, the standard configuration for the 767, in a 2-3-2 display (but we will get to it in our next trip report, for our return flight).

Welcome drinks were offered while the rest of the passengers boarded, and we picked both sparkling wine and orange juice — both were good.

Boarding was completed at 14h53; pushback started at 15h10, with a 40-minute delay.

The safety video was sort of «vintage», so to speak…

A smooth take-off proceeded, and soon after departing, the flight attendants handed hot towels and… the earbuds. You would definitely expect something better for Business class.

The crew, I have to say, was lovely throughout. So professional and pleasant.

To start, Mongolian beer! Golden Gobi is one of the most popular there and it didn’t disappoint, very fresh and light.

MIAT’s tableware was also a delight.

To eat, there was no menu, but a choice between «meat, chicken or fish» and they also brought a bread basket. The presentation was quite pretty, and then the food tasted great.

But all in all I was positively surprised with MIAT’s catering. It’s silly that my only complaint is the absence of menu… but it goes to show they have a solid offering.

Last but not least, a digestive and a chocolate bite. Excellent to finish it off and to try to get some sleep, as that flight left in late afternoon and it arrived in Ulaanbaatar by early morning of the next day.

Before trying to sleep, a visit to the lavatory, which was «normal»; nothing to see there, but at least it was impeccably clean, as was the rest of the cabin.

As you can imagine, MIAT’s Business class hard product is an angled-flat seat. Not good enough, but it’s not an easy fix; they were delivered this aircraft almost a decade ago, and they are waiting to receive their next-generation widebody in a couple of years, so obviously it would be a waste of resources to upgrade the 767s.

So sleeping was very hard, but the seat controls were simple and intuitive.

MIAT’s entertainment system was easy to use and operate, and also the selection was relatively diverse. Still, I couldn’t bother to use those earbuds, so I tried to sleep instead.

The controls were also simple, and I left the screen rolling the inflight map.

By then, it was almost night, and almost everyone was sleeping. Both cabins were quite full, by the way; from what I’ve seen, Summer is the best season for this flight, catering to the large Mongolian expat community and tourists visiting Mongolia — the country has been growing on this side over the years.

I managed to sleep for some three hours, then I woke up to read a book I had downloaded.

We were cruising over Russia’s vast territory — for some months now, MIAT has restarted overflying its neighbour — at 37,000 feet, and the flight was very smooth.

Some two hours before arrival, we were offered breakfast, again without a printed menu, being offered between salmon and yogurt. I picked salmon, which again was very tasty; the presentation was, again, very very pretty.

This was our flight path. At 04h48, already flying over Mongolia, descent to Ulaanbaatar was started.

We made up for the delay on departure and at 05h15 local time, five minutes before schedule, JU-1012 touched down in Ulaanbaatar’s International Airport.

The airport is not really large, and shortly we parked at our gate. Some four hours later the aircraft would proceed to Seoul as OM301.

It was a cool morning in the airport and we were quite tired from the trip, but we couldn’t help but go outside to spot some rare planes — see more at our Ulaanbaatar photogallery clicking here.

All in all it was a great experience going to Mongolia, and 90 minutes later (there was a lot of traffic) we reached our hotel in downtown Ulaanbaatar.

Final remarks

I really didn’t know what to expect coming into this flight, since there is so little information about them available on the internet. In any case, I think they stood up to the test; MIAT really managed to impress me.

Their strong points were definitely the catering, which was very well presented and tasty, and the lovely service by the crew; they really went above and beyond to provide us a pleasant experience, and they did.

In our flight reports here it gets almost boring that we always say that, but a flag carrier is one of the postcards to a country; in many ways, it is a tourist’s first impression to the country they are visiting, so even if they don’t have any competition, it’s important to give a good first impression. And for me, MIAT has done so.

With that said, there are points where they could improve, especially related to the hard product. But that could be excused in that they are so close to a replacement (there is even a 787 in their colors) that it would be pointless to spend money in a new cabin for the 767.

Still, the balance of things is clear; MIAT really did a good job. And I cannot wait to be back to Mongolia very soon, especially when they upgrade their widebody fleet.