Originally Posted by
ProleOnParole
I am answering a person seeking advice on booking with Air China. Recently I was considering booking with them myself, and only later saw such a notice on their website. Had I booked beforehand, I could have potentially ended up unable to receive the ticket I paid for.
I did not make a booking with them in the end, so I can't say how difficult it is to recover from such a situation. Maybe it does work with @gmail.com addresses as you say but if it doesn't, the airline certainly shrugs off any responsibility for this.
If I were about to book with Air China now and were asking for advice, I wish someone told me just that, so that I could make an informed decision, which is primarily why I posted in this thread.
If it's such a "non-issue" to you, no one is forcing you to respond, feel free to move along.
As I've mentioned up thread, I almost always book my flights using OTAs because I dislike dealing with PRC airlines directly.
That having been said, I feel compelled to come to CA's defense against the conspiracy theory you've posited because this is a public forum, and some people might take it seriously.
In light of the fact that ALL of CA's flights begin or end in the PRC, the tiny minority of their customers who use gmail AND don't understand that it is mostly blocked in the PRC would not be able to receive email communication from CA about matters such as delays and cancellations.
NO Chinese company, let alone one in which the central government is a majority shareholder, would dare say "be advised that because Google is censored in China, you won't be able to receive emails from us if you provide a Google email account unless you circumvent the system".
Most hospitality companies assume that their customers are smart enough to know this (and therefore say nothing), but some (like Air China and Ctrip) choose the white lie approach in order to preemptively avoid complaints from the 0.1% who aren't clued in.
While I admit this is slightly dishonest on their part, I can understand the rationale from a business perspective (minimizing complaints is good for both the company and the --would be-- complainers).