Noodlesz

Hi,

Just wanted to share my air china flight experience...esp since I can't seem to post on airline quality for some reason.

They kept mentioning they are a new member of Star Alliance and the official Olympic 2008 carrier. My United airlines # was on all my boarding passes so it appears they are intergrated now.

Flew Air China on a few legs during the past few weeks.

JFK - PEK: Delayed two hours @ JFK...but I got the first row in Economy so I was able to strech my legs a little into the aisle which was nice and no one could recline their seat into me. Seat pitch I found on this 747 to be quite adequate and better than most US airlines. Served two meals which were basically pork or fish with noodles or rice. All their meals tend to taste the same, and one snack of a ham and cheese sandwich. There is no personal video screen and only the old style projector at the front of the cabin. Plane is quite old and still has ash tray signs everywhere... it's a basic flight that will get your from A to B.

PEK - SIN: Took an overnight flight which was full. Got a middle seat which was terrible on a 767. A lot of families and kids returning from vacation it appeared. But same flight and service level, received one meal shortly after cruising. On-time.

HKG - PEK: Took athe 830AM flight, which left early, and the plane was not even 50% full. Was great as I was able to stretch out and cabin crew didn't wake me as I was alseep which I appreciated. However, I did hear them go by when the meals came so I did get a morning breakfast of seafood meifun. Flight arrived early as well and was very comfortable due to the lack of passengers.

PEK - JFK: Flight was full, sat in the last row of economy class. But it was actually quite nice as no one was behind me kicking my seat and there was little noise coming from the galley as I was at the window behind the bathroom so it acted as a buffer. Also got full recline on the last row with another inch or two btween the seat and wall which was great. Flight was on time and service was usual. Two meals again and a snack sandwich. Unfortunately I was really too far to see the video screen, but it was bad quality anyway and I slept most of the way. They played spiderman 3 and some other shows.

allset2travel

Appreciate the report. Thinking of flying them on an upcoming trip (due to cheaper fares than UA).

AKL/XIY

I am glad you made it with Air China.
Well, I think their tickets are very cheap and it is a very basic airline that takes you from A to B as you said. From what I know they are doing their best to bring up their service level,coz they have joined Star Alliance.

On the other hand, there are other Star Alliance member airlines have less service, such as Air New Zealand. NZ's internal service is nothing!!! as well as their services to the pacific or Australia, not much food, not much service but tickets are expensive. But NZ's long haul is not too bad compare with CA.

xzhu

One thing you should try, at the check-in counter, is to demand a window or aisle seat. In my experience, if you don't ask, you are very likely to get a middle seat, since they fill the seats from left to right, from front to back. You may get the middle seat even though the back half of the plane is empty.

allset2travel

A question about Air China airfares. For intra-China travel, I heard (no proof) that it costs less to book tickets when you are in China than booking online (while outside of China). Can someone shed some light on this?
Been to their web site. Not very user friendly. That said, I noticed that one way fare is just half of round trip fare. Simple. Or am I missing something?

ericw

I think u can only book Y on websites like expedia. There were some discussions about Chinese websites with English versions that take CCs.

Actually, now, you can get much cheaper fare by booking CA domestic RT on major routes.

briantoronto

Hi

You can book Air China flights on airchina.co.cn or airchina.travelsky.com. Internal flights can be substantially cheaper than through a western agency.

I took some random dates in May for a flight from PEK to PVG and found that on airchina.travelsky.com the return was 1500 RMB (~200USD) vs 350USD on travelocity.com.

I am planning a visit to Shanghai from HKG and will be booking this way to save...

-Brian

allset2travel

Thanks to the previous 2 posters ericw and brian for your heads-up.

I still find the airchina.com.cn site user unfriendly. It's English site, SFO is not listed in the "FROM" box pull-down list. It assumes all pax book tix from mainland China to overseas destinations only. I got around it to get a roundtrip quote PEK_SFO for July travel, just to get schedule and fares. To do a new search means going back to the HOME page (which alwlays opens in China, of course) again. Besides, the calendar is very hard to use. I never get it to work. Don't mean to rant here about it's site. Be nice if an Air China lurker notices this and fixes it's web site.

That aside, I question some of the airfare quotes on that site. For example, for that same SFO - PEK roundtrip. It quotes in its usual way in one-way trip of Y10,925. So the roundtrip is 2xY10,925. This is way too high for coach! OR, maybe it meant roundtrip fare is same as one-way, both being Y10,925. That does not make sense to me either. Am I missing something here?
Compared this to ITA's roundtrip fare of US$1,505 to $1,533, depends on mixed of *A carriers of UA and CA.

Question for Brian: What is the difference you find in chinatravelsky from airchina.com.cn? Which one will you use to book? Thanks
PS: I havd a hard time with both sites!

briantoronto

Searches on airchina.com.cn kick over to airchina.travelsky.com in my experience.

I have gone as far as being ready to put in my CC - for this it takes you to the bank of china e-commerce web site.

It looks like the site is really designed for those in China to fly internationally - not the other way around. I think to book a ticket YVR > PEK > YVR (for example) you have to go to an international site.

Final note. I tend to work on a mac, and found these sites hard to work with. As an experiment I warmed up a virtual Windows XP session with IE7 - the site worked fine for me

If you do make a booking - let us know how it goes.

-Brian

kkjay77

You call NZ's long haul not too bad?
I thought NZ's long haul was one of the best (at least in C/J whichever they use).

I don't know how good/bad their Y product is, though.

AKL/XIY

I think Qantas' Skybed is wicked

FlyZ46

Air China has a U.S. website, http://us.fly-airchina.com/US/index.html where you can purchase tickets for flights departing from the U.S. However, the booking engine seems to be from Expedia.com. Their Canada website also uses the same booking engine: http://ca.fly-airchina.com/

Air China Worldwide Websites:
http://www.fly-airchina.com/

AirChina.com.cn is designed only for passengers departing from inside China (incl. Hong Kong).

FlyZ46

I had made several bookings from airchina.com.cn. They had changed the online CC payment portal several times. Just a reminder: You may be required to activate "Verified by Visa" password authentication ( https://usa.visa.com/personal/securi...v_sym_verified ) before making the payment.

Another reminder: airchina.com.cn ONLY WORKS WITH Microsoft IE. I tried FireFox and the latest (last?) version of Netscape --- The conclusion is they're not supported.

allset2travel

Zhu
Thanks for posting the web site. It is quite a bit better than others that I used in the past.

*A Flyer

AT risk of being off topic. NZ J class on long haul kills the QF skybed. It is a horizontal flat bed pod unlike the angled lie flat skybed. It really is an unfair comparison to make.