Originally Posted by Yachtman

I saw some well priced flights just before Christmas with China Southern between the UK and Australia and booked a one-way ticket for myself Sydney-Shenzhen-Beijing-Amsterdam in January and my wife a return Sydney-Guangzou-London-Amsterdam-Guangzou-Sydney for April.

On check-in at Sydney for my flight I was told I had to sign a waiver in case of unexpected visa problems in China as I'd be making a domestic transit... The A330 was pretty basic, food well I looked at it but didn't even try it, IFE was non-existence. Boarding passes were only available up to Shenzhen where I was informed I'd need to collect my bags. Transit in Shenzhen was a lot of messing around, nothing really explained as the staff couldn't speak enough English to explain and none of the transit passengers spoke Mandarin. The domestic lounge was a bit urgh... At the security my boarding pass flagged up that I needed to go to a special room for secondary checking of my bags, it took quite a lot of sign language to figure this one out, but we got there in the end.

My Shenzhen-Beijing flight was a China Southern code on Xiamen metal (SkyTeam and 51% owned by China Southern), this caused lots of confusion and ultimately the flight was delayed resulting in missing my Amsterdam flight.
Nobody really wanted to assist me in Beijing, probably due to the language barrier I was asked many times why I missed the flight and why I'm not on my way to Amsterdam. Nobody could explain what the solution was, so I was sent to the Konggang Lanwan International hotel and told to go back in the morning to the airport. Barely slept, but on arrival to the airport I spent about 2 hours going between Xiamen and China Southern desks trying to find a solution, before being told I could fly back in a weeks time... I had a 48 hour visa so that wasn't happening. Ultimately after a lot of arguing I went on standby for the KLM flight and managed to be the last boarding. Elite Plus status was absolutely worthless and honestly felt that the airline had no idea how to deal with irrops or actually how to deal with Western passengers.

The flights for my wife and children to the UK were overall fine, no IFE and poor food, but they were on time and thats what mattered most. On the return sector we tried checking in online but for the final sector to Sydney my wife was allocated a seat at the front of the aircraft, my 6 year old son in the middle and my 9 year old daughter at the rear. I couldn't change this without an error occurring. So on arrival at Heathrow we tried, but even the supervisor there couldn't change it, the same in Amsterdam and so finally in Guangzhou we thought they should be able to do it, but nope they could not alter the seat assignment. The final result was my wife having to ask other passengers to swap seats, which thankfully they did, but it wasn't ideal.

Would we book China Southern again for a cheap deal? Probably not, I've tried a few other airlines for cheap deals including Vietnam and Kuwait airlines and then appreciate airlines like Qantas, Cathay and Emirates so much more, so perhaps by now I should learn my lesson? But then life is an adventure...