Have Chinese family so understand what's being said... But at the same time I realise that Chinese consumers are exposed to some of the worst things about travel by virtue of how their market has developed. All the bookings being with OTAs means they are completely at the mercy of OTAs in IRROPS and I have seen in practice they are not very helpful. Often consumers are charged for rebooking even when IRROPS are the airline's fault. Chinese consumers are abstracted almost entirely from very useful concepts like a booking reference / PNR – which they essentially don't use. The Air China app doesn't work unless you log in with PhoenixMiles, meaning practices that are universally understood elsewhere like adding your trip on an airline's app while preserving the frequent flyer number of a different airline in the same alliance are basically impossible. Or viewing the booking of a trip bought through a different channel.

I sort of get it – use the WeChat mini program if you can – fine. But it's an airline, a business which is necessarily international. So shouldn't the website work for non-Chinese passengers?

Also – when I described the problems I was having, the advice from multiple Air China call centre agents was to try booking on the official Air China website. They struggled to understand that that was exactly what I was already doing.

In any event, the flights have now been cancelled due to the security situation and AmEx is voiding the ticket to claw back the pending transaction. Otherwise they advised me a refund from Air China would take two billing cycles...