Originally Posted by
millionmiler
I'll take a wild guess that I fly MU more than any other regular reader of this board. For example, I flew 5 segments on MU just this week. In fact, I'll take another wild guess that I fly more miles each year than any other reader of this board.
I'm sure you have -- but I bet I've spent more time at MU than any other FTer.
Let's use the last MU flight that I took on Wednesday morning from PEK to PVG in J as an example. The plane was new and clean. The flight attendants met me at the door, took my bag and carried it to my seat. The FA's were young, attractive, well-trained, poised, happy, even fun to talk to. The FA that worked on my side took the inititive to ask if I prefered to be called by my last name or first name. First is my preference as I'm kind of over being called Mr. Millionmiler all the time. After that ALL of the FA's called me by my first name from memory. Their english language skills were consistent with staff at any 5 star hotel in Beijing or Shanghai. The safety demo video was also given in sign language which I thought was a professional touch though it doesn't apply to me per se. The on-demand video was great and I had trouble choosing which movie to watch. For my meal I chose the lobster in pepper sauce but all of the choices sounded fine. The lobster was certainly better than the cold, flavourless lobster that AA used to serve on salads on a couple of routes in international F. Oh, and the seats in J were better than the seats that AA is only really talking about installing in international J. The seats were similar to QF's long haul J seats without the pod shell. Don't even think about comparing them to the sh!ty BA seats in club Europe. I'd like the remind the readers that this was a DOMESTIC China flight.
The 2nd tier asian airlines are changing quickly for the better and MU is in that catagory. Its not the same airline that it was 5 years ago. Its not as good as CX overall but it was WAY better than the Dragonair flight I took from HKG-PEK last Sunday.
There are are things that I don't like about MU, but on the whole its a pretty good airline.
The airlines in China and India are improving so fast that its hard to keep up with the improvements. 10 years ago I often took a night 14 hour train ride rather than subject myself to the domestic Indian airlines. Now, the Indian airline Kingfisher has, in my opinion, the best domestic J/F service of any airline anywhere in the world. I wish we had an airline that good here in the US.
You were on an A330. Those aircraft are brand new (less than 2 years old -- most under a year old) and, yes, they are quite nice.
I agree that domestic F/J is quite good on Chinese carriers and becomes invaluable when there is a cancelation (not uncommon on the SHA-PEK route). It is also a modest premium over Y. I've not flwon Y and I don't intend to as F/J is so affordable.
Interestingly, I found the MU in-flight service better on SHA-PEK than I did on PVG-HKG.