Originally Posted by mattmacinnis
Oh man, I just fell out of my chair with excitement. I am, of course, Mr. United Airlines (Esq.), but now that I'm living in China, my mileage plus account has been hurting on domestic travel. (RDMs, but no EQMs.. and substandard service on CA.) I know this won't be fixed overnight, but I can see that I'm going to be in China for a while.
I'm looking forward to this process. UA and LH should be able to help CA get their things in order. For example, in Shanghai, if you have a so-called e-ticket on CA, you have to go to a machine to print out your paper ticket before you can check in! How ridiculous is that. I'm willing to bet they'll have to implement "real" e-tickets as part of their ascession into *A.
Hooray for CA. Hooray for UA. It's good for everyone. And it's going to be much more valuable than Shanghai Airlines joining the Alliance.
Printing out the ticket is for getting thru security in China. For all domestic flights you have to have a ticket and a boarding pass for them to stamp and verify. Stupid but it puts people to work.