I was booked for CA 105 DLC-HKG, departing time 12:55 pm. When I arrived to the check-in counter, they told me that there will be at least a 3 hours delay due to fog in Beijing (the flight from Dalien to Hong Kong starts first from Beijing...). Such kind of situation are normal in China that flights are delaying few hours. So that's also the reason why I booked my connection flight to Taipei with 4 hours delay to the arrival time of CA 105 to HKG.

However, they were keeping pronouncing delay due to bad weather in Beijing. After 3 hours of delay, they finally changed their announcement to: passengers please contact the desk to go to the reserved hotel for rest. Quite a few of passengers were upset and a long discussion with the responsible counter manager started. People were yelling, screaming and so on around, suddenly the manager came up with a new excuse since lot of passengers called to Beijing to ensure that the weather wasn't that bad at all, so the manager was forced to say the truth: the allocated aircraft is still in repair, in Beijing!!!

Meanwhile, it was already 6:00pm, 5 hours delay, I decided to ask the manager to give me his mobile phone and to make sure, if the flight is getting canceled or if they are going to fly to HKG anyway. He gave me the confirmation that they won't cancel the flight at all and we just have to wait at the hotel for further information. I simply decided to go to the town to have a decent meal as well a nice bar visiting together with a Canadian guy I've met at the airport (He was a bit lost since the discussion was held in Chinese all the time..).

Around 8:30 pm, after our restaurant and bar tour, I called the manager in duty and he told me that the flight will arrive in BEIJING around 9:40pm from CHONGQING! So the information after 7:30h delay was simple: finally we were able to organise a replacment. Slow move, I must say...

At this time I was so tired already from all the ordeal all over the day, so I have finally decided to join the others in the hotel. At 11:30pm, finally a call from the manager telling the passengers that the flight is going to depart at 1:15am..

It was a nice flight but I just simply spent the whole flight by sleeping... well, only 2h.

What was the good side of the experience? There were severals:

- NEVER ever try to fly Air China or any other Chinese domestic airlines if you could avoid it and choose other international carriers!!!!
- I had a chance to meet a nice Canadian bush pilot as well a nice Korean businessman living in Dalien. More friends due to a lot of spare time...
- At the end of the day Air China Dalien branch office even gave us (at least the passengers which gave their signature, quite a few refused the offer..) 400 RMB as compensation, which is about 50 USD.

bad side of the experience:

- since I was booked to a TG flight to Taipei and they only have one single flight a day for this route, I had to book another CX flight for the section HKG-TPE to avoid to stick in HKG for another 12h!
- had to cancel my hotel reservation. Actually I have to pay a no show fee due to the cancellation policy. But since I'm a good customer of that hotel, they didn't (at least I think so!) charge me anything extra. Otherwise it would have been around 1500 RMB!!!
- I had to run around for relabelling my luggages due to the flight changes
- I had to cancel few meetings etc.

So somehow I really believe that Air China must give the passengers more than just 50 USD. Any suggestion? Any similar experiences with Air China?