Originally Posted by
JimAtl
I've been using their website for about 4 years, and it has always worked fine. If it was down earlier this month, it must've not been long, because I recently bought several tickets traveling between Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Beijing for an upcoming trip in Feb.
As for making payments on their website, you won't get the payment window loaded properly if you do not have a Chinese-language software installed (it's sufficient to enable the Chinese add-on in Windows.) You won't need to understand Chinese to proceed once your payment window is properly loaded. You can use either VISA or AMEX (I have never used an MC) to check out.
CTRIP is better if you want to search across different Chinese airlines, and they even have a 1-800 number in case you have questions. But they will charge you an online booking fee.
Actually I agree with most of your comments. I had made several bookings on CA's domestic website in the past, using both credit cards issued by BofA and Chinese domestic bank cards, and I never encountered any problems when flying with them.
CA's website sometimes offers deeper discounts (e.g. Z class) on domestic flights than any other agents can possibly provide. What I am complaining about is the constantly ongoing changing of its online payment system, which makes it seem quite "fragile" and unreliable.