1W in talks with China Eastern
 

This would be great for me.

Weird given CXs ownership of KA (Dragon Air) for chinese domestic flights

Also would have thought that CX would view the network as overlapping CXs too much, like previous BA boycotts of Euro-based airlines.

Well, as long as I'm paying to stare at a random seatback advertisement, eat week-old faux beef and be served by a 60-pound flight attendant with cigarette burns on her calves, I'd better be getting AAdvantage miles. :-)

KA flies to China from HKG only. MU covers domestic China and also other international routes.

This would also mean OW finally covering routes between China and Korea.

1W is usually the quality-driven alliance.. but what can they do since the other two major Chinese airlines already have made commitement to the other alliances.. so the remaining airline is at the same time the worst of these three major Chinese airlines..

Since AA's foolish pilots stopped AA's much needed China expansion they have got to get their passengers around China somehow.

JAL has pretty good coverage of China, so that will help. But oneworld does need (an additional) Chinese carrier. There aren't a lot of good choices, unfortunately.

I wish the Oneworld negotiators the best of luck negotiating with China Eastern. They are not easy to deal with in business transactions.

Btw, if you think the food on MU is bad, try their company cafeteria at SHA . . .

...you mean surely the one that has a 20% cross shareholding with CX and was and perhaps still negotiating a buyout of AZ, so they can get enough European traffic without need to codeshare with, you know, a certain large European yellow carrier whose name is synonimous with quality and sophistication, especially in Y class...:D
...and the one that is almost three years singing the same tune "we're joining! we're joining!" and at the same time setting a hub for codeshare with their intended friends in...Chengdu?...:D

Who says food on MU is bad??? I have proof here showing they serve "DELICIOUS FOOD"!

http://img152.imagevenue.com/img.php..._122_102lo.JPG

Hahaha, that sure looks like one DELICIOUS FOOD!!! :D

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.

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.

millionmiler thanks for the write up. I've heard less pleasant things said about MU's Y (but then when ever is Y a pleasant experience) but good to know that they do a decent job.

I'd certainly agree with your comments about India. Things have moved a long way in the 6 years I have been travelling there. Kingfisher are a very impressive outfit, I wish we had an outfit like that it Europe too.

JAL combined with Dragon Air does provide decent coverage for China, but the intra-China flights are a huge gap right now, and will grow even more important in coming years. Smart move by OW IMHO.

I recommend trying CA's next time, theirs might be a different style. :D

Couldn't agree more. It's too bad we still don't have an OW carrier for intra-Canada.:o

I'm sure that Y on MU is not as good. I can't think of any airline that I look forward to sitting in Y though.

I'm sure you have -- but I bet I've spent more time at MU than any other FTer.

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.

I've eaten in Hainan's company cafeteria in Haikou and it was better than MU.

Fortunately, when at MU, I usually end-up having lunch at the Shanghai International Airport Hotel.

oddly enough i actually like MU...but they need to improve their english website and make it usable. Maybe the 1W prospect will have them address this issue. Plus LAX-PVG flight would be awesome to finally earn miles

Actually, the LAX-PVG is codeshared with AA (as is some other routes like PVG-PEK, PVG-CKG, etc.) so for AA that isn't an issue ... of course for other OneWorld carriers ...

it's a big issue for those that don't fancy forking over an arm and a leg for the aa code.

since you've drawn me into the discussion, i will volunteer my own comments on mu:

-i think they do a good job on their japan routes (but, considering that pvg-fuk/hij/kix costs close to 10x sha-pek, i can't give them too much praise)
-i agree that the new planes are nice
-it's the ground service that irks me. many, if not most, chinese airlines are fine once you leave the ground. what mu has yet to learn is that consolidating its 4, 5, and 6p flights (pek-sha) into one is not cool. ca is better in this regard. fm and hu don't have enough flights to play with such fire
-like the rest of the pack, they continue to improve

Probably right on the prices ... I have been annoyed by the disappearance of the good codeshare prices for the AA flights operated by MU. The AA/MU flights show the discount and deep discount economy AA buckets (H, K, M, V, N) as open but obviously you can't buy them, at least not online from fare searching that I've done on this route. I think it is a function of AA trying to direct traffic to ORD-PVG instead.

As it is, I'm on MU 586 (AA 5790) on Saturday in J ... we'll see if I can start looking forward to MU in OW.

No, AA has been charging more than MU for as long as I can remember (same goes for BR). Back in early days of the MU flight (when MU was a really dreadful airline), you could fly to Shanghai and back for less than $500 if you booked the MU flight number through a bucket shop. Since I was an AA loyalist at the time, I always checked AA as well, but had a hard time getting fares under $800.

I'm planning on going there this weekend as well. Drop me a line if you have free time.

Actually, BR's and AA's price differential isn't much in J, but then again I travel transpacific in J, not Y so I suspect that the CO/AA flight numbers for BR still price out much higher in Y.

As for the other buckets I was referring to, I can imagine if AA sold the V bucket for example, that would probably come out to $1000 - $1200. Still higher than the $750 I saw one time, but definitely a lot better than the $2800 in in the Y bucket AA seems to be selling nowadays.

just to muddy the waters a bit - Hainan are now rumoured to be approaching OW . My initial response was "yeah , right :rolleyes: " - but I believe that they have had a close relationship with MA , and according to this article other OW newbie JL are keen also ( of course , according to this article CA is already in Star and CZ is already in Skyteam rather than both being 'membership in progress' so the article may not bee 100% accurate ) ... but bearing in mind that most google searches on MU seem to be about how much money it is losing and how many top level executives have been sacked perhaps it is not the most stable of possible candidates ?

opinions ??

http://www.chinahospitalitynews.com/...orld-alliance/

yeah, hu makes me cringe. imo, the only good thing about booking an hu ticket, aside from the fact that they tend to be dirt cheap, is that there's a good chance your flight will get canceled so you can rebook on a better airline.

Well it would be great for me if Hong Kong Airlines (a Hainan subsidiary) became a OneWorld affiliate - I would love to be able to get MPC status miles flying to Clark!

Hainan Airline wants to join 1W
 

I guess it may become a reality as long as CX doesn't reject them.

Hainan Airlines Plans to Join Oneworld Alliance
March 12, 2007

Hainan Airlines, the fourth largest airline company in China, has announced plans to launch two new routes and join the Oneworld Alliance this year to make up for its shortage in overseas airline networks.

The two new planned routes are a Beijing to Osaka route opening on March 25, and a Beijing to St. Petersburg line starting in May 2007.

A senior manager from Hainan Airlines disclosed that the company had already passed their application to the Oneworld Alliance, and Japan Airlines, a member of Oneworld Alliance, who is sharing its code with Hainan Airlines, will be the recommender for this application.

Air China has joined Star Alliance and China Southern has joined the SkyTeam Alliance, so among the four largest airlines companies in China, only China Eastern hasn't any acted to join an international aviation alliance.

Li Jiaxiang, board chairman of Air China, said that it is hard for an airline company to make a great development by only depending on its own power under today's competition in the global aviation industry. Joining international aviation alliances means airline companies in China can extend their networks all over the world with the support of partners.

http://www.chinahospitalitynews.com/...orld-alliance/

wow! talk about a speedy turn of events!

there are visions of hu ft threads dancing around in my head. possible titles:

"i never knew 767s could hold so many people"
"8 hours of fun at hongqiao"
"beijing chiropractor recommendations sought"
"what on earth is xinhua airlines?"
"warm pbr never tasted so good"
"aer lingus looks a lot better now"
"do they ever use real gates?"
"they brought in a spare airplane from haikou!"
"i received a phone call from hu this morning advising me that my noon flight had been rescheduled for 10p"

What I'm looking forward to (assuming they join OW) is being able to redeem miles on them...maybe not on the transpac segments (though it does provide another option ex-US non-stop to China), but moreso for plethora of itineraries it opens up for award travel within China, or as part of an Asia 1 award ticket (i.e. LAX-PVG(x)-XIY(x)-PVG-LAX, etc). Sure the additional flight from PVG-XIY is marginal in cost (maybe ~$100 on a Chinese carrier through elong or yoee), but the ease of having it all on one ticket will be great :)

i was also looking forward to redeeming miles on mu, but on the monopoly routes to japan and korea that feature the sky high fares.

Exactly my thinking.

Looks like SQ is buying (a percentage of) China Eastern. :(

Link

Looks like it's around 24%

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/arti...cle_318641.htm

I guess they are trying to do this to prevent 1W from getting their hands into a Chinese based carrier.

I think their motivation is more direct. SQ wants to get their hands on a Chinese carrier. I don't think that they care much about 1W either way.