Did everyone see China Eastern has now moved to Group 1
 

Noticed this on Delta.com this morning as I was reminding myself which MU fare classes get full mileage credit. This is very helpful for travel to/within China.

http://www.delta.com/content/www/en_.../airlines.html

That is a great news if a lot of booking class in economy is available. More choice for run and prob award


GOL is also new group 1!!

This is great news.

News to me, thanks for the post!

Did everyone see China Eastern has now moved to Group 1
 

Wow! No, I hadn't!

My morning ritual is, to make coffee, check FlyerTalk, feed the cats, have some cereal, brush my teeth, check the news headlines, THEN check Delta's partner chart for updates!!!

;) :eek: :D

Excellent news. This provides lots of interesting alternatives...

This is not your China Eastern Airlines of yesterday. The Look, New Experience, Boeing 777-300ER.

http://thedesignair.net/2015/02/04/c...ded-advantage/

Total game changer for sure. MU flies the B773 from JFK to PVG and then onto points into South East Asia, like Singapore. The business class fare from JFK to SIN on MU is only $3600.00. The best Delta BE fare is $5600.00. With MU, brand new B773 planes with a 1-2-1 direct aisle access cabin, Delta you get a 777 and then onto an old and outdated B767-300. I think its time to try MU to Singapore. No more waiting and playing the GUC gate upgrade game.

They also have family couch seats in economy. Something delta doesnt offer.

Aren't you confusing MU with CI?

China Eastern often has some amazing fares based out of Tokyo, so this is definitely great news.

This is potentially great news, but I'd be interested to hear more about recent MU TPAC in coach if anyone's done it.

I had to send 9 people to SIN a few months ago and looked at China Eastern, but ended up on China Southern, after reading some unfavorable reviews and hearing some negative stories about China Eastern.

They were all pretty happy - with a newish 777 JFK-CAN.

Haha nice!! Sounds like my morning ritual too..except that I have only 1 cat to feed!

Now if only they would restore KE to Group 1. It's shameful that a founding member of SkyTeam is listed lower than such prestigious names as Aeroflot, Czech, Xiamen, and TAROM...

Took another look at the partner charts and those really cheap fares are in fare classes not listed in the table so 0 MQM, MQD, SkyMiles...

I thought T was the lowest fare bucket for MU?

Not even close :D

http://en.ceair.com/easternmiles/hkl...725_11796.html

Huh, I tried doing a few dummy bookings from North America to Shanghai and the lowest fare bucket I could get was T. Maybe the even lower ones are reserved for intra-Asia or other routes.

I would as well - but for different reasons. I just booked an award on MU on their A330. Seems that those were also recently refurb'd to full flats in J. Still a 2-2-2 layout, but that's just fine (sometimes better, actually) when travelling with a companion, IMO.

The lowest available and the lowest in existence are not necessarily the same.

SIN - PVG - JFK (Class Q at SGD 614.00)

MU566
23:25 Mar.12 (SINGAPORE)
04:55 Mar.13 (Shanghai Pu Dong Airport)

MU587
11:30 Mar.13 (Shanghai Pu Dong Airport)
14:25 Mar.13 (NEW YORK JOHN F KENNEDY)

i travel on china eastern quite often within china. regardless of this new group 1 deal, it is not fun flying in and out of shanghai as flights are often delayed. i flew their 777 a couple of time. the service was extremely friend but the food was blah. the seat wasn't clean though...

I'd rather leave SIN at midnight than 6 am. That was one advantage of the KE connection through ICN, although it did mean lots of time in the KE lounge at ICN, which isn't such a bad thing.

From https://www.delta.com/content/www/en...-eastern.html:

Q does not appear in the table.

Am I correct in assuming that if I book JFK-PVG in business directly with MU that I can get full mileage but without the medallion bonus?

Are you talking about redeemable miles? You will receive a Medallion bonus on the base miles as noted in footnote 4:

(4) Medallion Mileage Bonus is based on Base Miles earned: Diamond - 120%; Platinum - 80%; Gold - 60%; Silver - 40%

You will also receive a class of service bonus on the base miles for business class (75 - 100%).

I don't think this is right. When DL moved to revenue based earning of miles, the class of service bonus was eliminated. As a DM, I get 11 miles per dollar for D1, FC, and coach tickets equally (plus the RDMs for buying tickets with a DL AmEx card).

We still get the class of service bonus on MQMs, namely 150% for DL flights ticketed in B Y G A P Z I D, with 200% for FULL F and FULL J/C.

This is for non 006 tickets?

Anyone else find it odd that an international first-class (P) ticket on China Eastern only receives a MQM bonus of 150% while a business-class (J) ticket receives a MQM bonus of 200%?

When booking directly with a partner using their codes and ticket stock, RDM, MQM, and MQD are all based on a percentage of miles flown, with various medallion and class of service bonuses.

MU appears to have 3 First Class buckets: U/F/P. U earns 200%, so I'm guessing that's the full fare bucket. Only business (J) earns 200%, the other business buckets (C,D,I) earn 150%.

So not odd, and in fact the same as for AF, where P and J earn 200% but F,C,D,I,Z earn 150%.

For what it's worth, the purser on my flight out of NRT and I were talking about how great the ground staff are in NRT. (This is the third time I've had him in the last week or so.) He told me Delta is continuing to eliminate jobs at NRT. He also said many of the Detroit-based crew are worried because they think Delta will start to also eliminate Asian flights out of Detroit as it shifts to Seattle and probably makes Shanghai a hub with China Eastern like Amsterdam is with KLM.

I think those Detroit have nothing to fear. It doesn't make any sense (financial or otherwise) for DL to send route East Coast to Asia passengers thru Seattle. DL needs 2 Asian gateways, one for the Eastern US and one for the West.

Routing someone from Boston thru Seattle to Asia is silly. Routing someone from San Francisco thru Detroit to Asia is silly.

Then what about Atlanta and New York's J.F.K.? Delta has non-stop flights from those airports to Asia. The same with Los Angeles on the West Coast.

And PDX too. Just because DTW and SEA are the main Asia gateways, doesn't mean that ALL flights have to go through those cities.

I'm guessing the PDX-NRT flight is because of Nike, but I could be wrong.

DL has n/s from these airports to Tokyo, and that's it. DTW is also losing its utility for TPAC from the east coast. Example: HKG, which is only accessible from SEA. Departing from NYC, I could fly DL JFK-SEA-HKG, or I could take a non-stop flight on CX with better timings and service, or I could route on JL or NH (again better timings and service) if I wanted a Japan stopover. Why exactly would I fly DL on this route?

On paper, China Eastern is an option, but in practice with a hit-or-miss soft product and (even more critically) PVG as the least reliable transit option, there's just no compelling reason to stay on DL/SkyTeam for NYC based (or really most of the East Coast) TPAC travel.

HKG is still accessible from NRT. Just had a colleague make the JFK-NRT-HKG trip. Or is this service being discontinued? If so, you are right, no one in my office will want to fly through SEA. The only reason they do NRT rather than CX is because of the Skymiles program and that it gets them status for upgrades domestically. DL is making status less valuable through FCM, but that's another matter...though if it wasn't for that pursuit of status, I don't think anyone would take DL from JFK to HKG, even if it was a nonstop.

For my April trip, I am only offered connections via SEA or ICN, with the latter being absurdly overpriced KE codeshares.

Interesting. If DL only offers service to HKG via SEA, then that's another city to which I'll be flying on somebody else from JFK.

DL dropped NRT-HKG back on Oct 24, 2014 (I was on the last flight) and closed the HKG FA base. They recently brought it back temporarily for the winter and it alternates with SEA-HKG. They will drop NRT-HKG again at the end of March and go back to flying solely from SEA to HKG..

Which means, theoretically, they could bring it back again. Especially with that new Sky Team lounge in Hong Kong.

Personally, I prefer NRT to SEA for making connections to Asia. Take SIN. 12 hours from DTW to NRT and the 8 hours from NRT to SIN. NRT makes a nice almost halfway point to shower, eat and catch up on some work. I would rather do that than sit on a plane for 16 or 17 hours, which I think is going to be the case going forward.

Also, the Delta ground staff at NRT and SIN are incredible. At HKG, it was contract staff, if I recall correctly. Plus, Delta never seemed to value HKG judging by the lousy domestic-configured 757s that it often flew there from NRT.

I can't imagine the lounge will factor at all into their route planning decisions.

I liked the DTW-HKG flight. The timings were good and DTW is pleasant enough for transfers. I only flew HKG-NRT as part of a stopover in TYO, but with stopovers no longer permitted on award tickets that segment lost its appeal anyway.

Anywho, off to oneworld I go.