Originally Posted by MBS PremExec
Wow! I had one of my worst flights EVER on FM last month and will not book them again. To each their own!
Where are you getting the RMB260 fare? I've never found anything that close, even with my Shanghai office booking it with consolidators...I opt for C or F intra-China because the difference between Y and C/F is usually only about US$50.00--and the ground service alone is worth it most of the time.
deep discounts have been more and more common of late and are often, if not usually, viewable/bookable on ctrip.
when ctrip comes up empty, i pick up the phone and call local agents. recently, i've found that hu often has cheap seats on offer even when ctrip shows full-fare only (presumably because hu is miserable).
the short of it is, i've flown 25+ segments between beijing and shanghai/hangzhou/ningbo over the past 3 months and have never had to pay more than y620 (vast majority below y400). on the one occassion that full-fare really meant full fare, i tried out the z train, which was well worth the experience. f/c are a lot more expensive (much more than $50 difference) because discounts aren't common.
as for fm, i'll be the first to admit that they have their bad days, but my opinion rests on quite a bit of data. i like them because they run their airline more like a business than a branch of the government (at least relative to ca and mu)....oh, and their FAs rock. more importantly, they aren't as bad as their competitors in a number of respects:
hu - most miserable airline i've experienced in china, hands down
mu- check out my trip report beijing-shanghai-jiaxing. while an isolated example, the problems/incompetance i reinforced a lot of my previous hunches. i'd still fly mu on domestic parts of international flights because they use good planes and don't cancel on a whim
ca- sure they are less likely to get stuck in bus gates at pek, but dirty planes and company mentality stuck in mao years
cz- a good airline, but they don't have many frequencies on my main routes