Noodlesz

China Southern and Air China tend to have cheaper fares on their sites sometimes. Other airlines usually only quote the full price. But yea, it's cumbersome to use a foreign card and sometimes the page only has info in Chinese.

I used Elong and Travelzen on my two recent booking. Elong charges 3%, travelzen nothing. But for some strange reason, travelzen didn't show the fare I booked on Elong. Even though it was available there and on Air China.

Air China i've used a foreign card 2 yrs ago, but last time trying didn't seem to work. Just gave me a list of various chinese banks and to enter info through there, but all the pages turned chinese so I didn't really understand it.

fadeforward

There's only one on ctrip, the MU flight. Yeah, the price actually went up on me, which was great, because it knocked the crud from my brain and allowed me to remember to call United and get a N.Asia-N.Asia *A award. Air China flies there from CKG and CTU, hurrah! Anyways, thanks again for your advice. Now I need to look up *A lounge options in CKG and CTU.

Jiatong

The discount window changes week to week, I watch C-trip and use the daily dealfinder chart, and then look at flight options on say every flight day, ie a monday, etc. The discounts start going down about 5-8 days out. But also depends on high/low weekends, holidays, and school out days. Some hotel travel desks will search for you, they may charge a delivery fee of about 30 rmb, and also some can add it on to your room bill if need be....

CZ and CA do sometimes have better direct discount pricing, but will say there is only 1 or 2 tickets left at that price.

allset2travel

I like to share my recent experience with ctrip regarding one flight (on CZ) that I booked through it.
I received an email from ctrip notifying me that my flight was cancelled, and that ctrip has elected to assign me a flight on the following day. (original flight was late night departure; new flight was first flight out nhext day).
Unfortunately I MUST be at destination that night, and besides the new fares was 3x original.

I called the US toll-free number (that links to call center in Beijing). CSR with decent English was able to help gettingme an earlier flight on the original date & honor previous fare, but after I asked for and she checked with a supervisor.

It cost me 1 phone call, and 15 minutes. I think ctrip handles the situation professionally and I appreciate it.

mnredfox

Interesting. I didn't know this. Ctrip and elong both charge a 3.5% fee (I think) to use a foreign CC, and don't forget the foreign conversion fees if your CC has them (most do). Travelzen prices in USD directly on the website for me, so I'll have to watch this the next time I use it.

Search all three sites, though I've heard from folks that they like travelzen better. elong's website I like the best. Also for China, don't forget about Spring Airlines.

Lastly, for CZ I know for a fact that if you book on their website directly in English, the prices are higher. If done in Chinese, you can get the same fares as ctrip/elong/tzen.

moondog

I partially redacted my criticism of Travel Zen's forex policies last month; I ran a search and the gap was narrower than previously (around 1% iirc). TMK, they don't process USD transactions in the US so you're still subject to subject to foreign transaction fees unless you have Schwab, Cap 1, etc.

fsfguy

I've had great service from both c-trip and elong and I use them on every trip despite the upcharge for cc use. I've changed tkt's and refunded and had success with both. I'm unfamiliar with Travelzen, I'll have to check it out.

I've found the "discount window" changing in some cases over the last year, I've seen flights offered at 70% discount 2+ months out though there still seems to be a good window in the 2-4 week range.

Regarding LXA flights mentioned in the quote above, I've almost never seen much of a discount on those fares. Sometimes, you can get a lower fare by buying two tkts, one to XIY, CTU, etc. and another to LXA. Currently, for next week, via XIY, that would save about 700 RMB, more than enough to pay for the cc charges.

Most times, I've stopped over in CTU where it's pretty easy to get the TTB permit.

Chinatrvl

More or less.
www.flychinasouthern.com is English and expensive
www.cs-air.com/en is English and gives the same prices as the Chinese version.

mnredfox

Got the Schwab before it disappeared, makes me feel less guilty of using plastic when I can in China. No ATM fees either, great!

Wow, didn't know this, thanks!

Chinatrvl

Tech talk (don't know if this has already been mentioned here) :

The reason why www.flychinasouthern.com (and expedia, etc.) don't show the discount but only Y-class tickets is that Amadeus reservation system is used. This is currently not relly compatible to Travelsky system, which is used on www.cs-air.com/en (and www.ctrip.com etc). It's not in bad faith of CZ when giving two quotes on the two different websites, but a complex IT issue that is yet to be solved. The "30 day window" has its technical origins in Travelsky as well, which is designed to handle (or open up now) the flights only a short period before the actual departure, and not like Amadeus 330ish days in advance.

All airline schedules can be found on www.travelsky.com/english/index.htm - that's similar to www.amadeus.net.

This problem applies to all Chinese carriers, except Shanghai airlines (you won't find any FM flight on the link above as well). FM uses another system, and therefore, FM flights usually open up the discount buckets longer in advance than other Chinese carriers - and has discounted First class available.

fsfguy

I've never been able to get the www.cs-air.com/en site to work. I usually get "undefined" errors.

I think that the fare differences have deeper roots since before ctrip, etal. the cheapest seats became available closer to departure when booking direct with the airline in person. So, I think it has a lot to do with their yield management dept.

iahphx

Does China Eastern have an English-language website with "locals" pricing?

Chinatrvl

No... I'm afraid not.

Chinese: www.ce-air.com

moondog

Can you (or anyone else) provide an example of a case in which an airline website blasts other channels out of the water? I'm curious because I've done the OP's drill on many occasions and have always concluded that it was a waste of time in the end (i.e. the y10 savings that I often encounter are quickly wiped out by the time I spend jumping through the hoops that the airlines place in my path... "fax us this form plus front/back of cc*).

Chinatrvl

On very, very few occasions, neither ctrip nor elong have R and N class (CZ called "smart flier") available. From my experience, this happens with CZ when they open up a fare bucket longer in advance than the usual 30 to 50 days, or on the very last minute. Happend to me several times on CAN-SYX or SYX-PEK (but there is -imo- no pattern with SYX!), once CKG-CAN. The recent (well early 2010) example was SYX-PEK where CZ had R available (30%), but ctrip only 80% or full; two or three months before the flight.

But, as already said, it's very rare (and it might as well be some computer error with CZ/ctrip), but if there's a difference (excpet the 10 yuan), it is quite high...


Edit:
Here we go, such a coincidence: Flying NKG-CAN on Aug, 22. No discounted flights yet on ctrip/elong, however, CZ has CZ3698 already available in N and R for 450 yuan. Ctrip and elong both price the flight 830 yuan. Same on Jul, 19 and other dates(710 yuan vs. 450 yuan then).