Recently took a roundtrip flight on MU in J (Business) class going from TPE to PVG to KMG to DXB and back again, total time in the air of about 24 hours not including connections. All flights were on A330 planes but we got a mix of three different types of seating, thought you all might be interested in the experience.

The Seats
Some things to note that was common across all flights. The food was generally edible but not “good,” figure something $15-20 might buy you at your local Chinese restaurant in the US. Drink options were fairly limited as well, they certainly don’t get the idea of “sparkling mineral water” at all. The pillow is medium sized and OK, the blanket is your standard thin economy type. All seats provided universal power plugs and USB charging. Each flight had workable FREE wifi that was pretty easy to get on to even without pre-registration although a VPN is needed if you want to access to websites blocked by the Great Firewall. You cannot use your smartphone for anything when the flight doors are shut, period. During take-off and landing, they will insist that ANYTHING that uses a battery be “shut off” which included my Amazon Kindle ereader and my wife’s noise-cancelling headphones. Yes, really. All of the IFE appear to run on an ancient version of Android, possibly Gingerbread or Honeycomb (I recognize the icons) and would fail/reboot OFTEN. Could never get through an entire movie without at least one reboot, maybe two. It’s doubtful this is going to be fixed, just keep an idea of where in the movie you are and whenever a reboot happens, go find your movie again and move the slider back to approximately where you were. Very annoying.

The FA’s do a great job checking the bathroom between uses and will even insist on checking again right before you enter. We never once smelled any cigarette smoke across all six segments, I’m very sensitive to smoke and was definitely checking for that! IMO, the FA’s were competent, generally friendly, and strove to make our flights pleasant. Surprisingly, they were completely unable to answer any questions about ground operations (eg, luggage transfer, short connection times, availability of airport carts, immigration forms, lounge locations, etc).

Old Style Non-Staggered Fully Flat
Set as a 2-2-2 arrangement, there is not much privacy in these seats but as I was flying with my wife they worked well for us. Moderate amount of storage but most of it was in the seatback in front of us which was actually a bit far away, too far for my wife to reach when belted in. IFE was tiny and low resolution, not good. I actually liked the foot rest/bench as it was wide and open, very easy to find a comfortable position for the feet when lying down. I’d call this one an “oldie but goodie” and would not hesitate to fly this seat with my wife in the future. If flying solo, I’d pick a middle seat so no one would have to step over me (or me them).

Thompson Vantage XL
These are the newest seat renovations in the fleet and are arranged 1-2-1, I believe these were installed about four months ago. They look a lot what I expect the new Delta One Suites to be like without the sliding door. IFE was upgraded to a high resolution 15” screen. Plenty of storage spaces that were all easily accessible. Moderate footwell space in most seats but a lot of foot space in the bulkhead seats. However, the two window bulkhead seats would probably get annoying because of the on-going swishing of the curtain as FA’s and passengers go back and forth plus constant light spilling out of the galley area. Also the seats are staggered, so the best seats are the ones with the side table between the seat and the aisle. That means there is literally a single “best” seat in business class (I gave that one to my wife).

There are some annoying things about this seat. The upper shoulder seatbelt harness is way too close to the neck and constantly digs in, thankfully you are only required to use it during take-off and landing, I learned to disconnect that part during all other parts of the flight. In bed mode, the seat is actually fairly narrow, my shoulders barely fit. The seat could also use a bit more padding in general. Seat controls are not as granular as I’m used to, a bit hard to explain but essentially there are fewer degrees of freedom when positioning the seat than expected. Touching any of the controls will automatically turn on a storage light and the footwell light. Every. Single. Time. No good place to put your shoes, no storage space and the leg rest will literally crush your shoes if placed in front of the seat. I found myself constantly moving them depending on what I was doing (exceptions are the bulkhead seats which have a little extra space to squeeze shoes off to the side). My blanket repeatedly got trapped when I moved the seat also. Also, every flight announcement would cause the screens to go BRIGHT WHITE which is quite visually painful in a dark cabin.

Reverse Herringbone
These are barebones Reverse Herringbone seats arranged 1-2-1. Moderate amount of privacy as there are no partitions in the middle seat pair, very little storage (had to pile several things on the armrest and babysit them while taking-off). IFE is large but apparently low(er) resolution (not HD?). Annoying that when the screens are stored, you are forced to stare at your seatmate’s monitor when seated in the middle pair. You may notice the floor has three levels which makes sense when the seat is reclined or flat. But when upright there are limited positions your feet can fit into that are comfortable. This seat has the tiniest footwell I have ever used, it’s basically a coffin when lying flat. These type of seats are very egalitarian, there is no “best seat,” couples should sit in the center and solos should sit at the window and that’s pretty much what everybody did on this flight.

Summary
All-in-all, China Eastern’s J Class seating were all acceptable and generally well maintained. Each had its positive and negatives, the biggest differences being foot space, privacy, storage, and IFE. But ultimately, I could sleep in all three. MU flights are often priced quite competitively, sometimes just around what other airlines charge for PE. IMO, based on price and seating alone, they are a very good value. OTOH, ground crew service and IRROPS pushes down the value quite a bit but that’s for a different topic.