Just tried to book a ticket from UAE to China on Air China. Right now there are few flights running hence booking an airline I don't normally take.

Booked on Air China's official website. The booking UI is prehistoric. Entered a middle name making the whole name too long – kicked back to the beginning of the process, despite entering four passengers' details already.

Finally got to the payment page. Only Visa and Mastercard listed as being accepted. Tried three credit cards from three different banks. All rejected. Called the number on the screen. Call centre in UAE is closed, call the China call centre. Called them and waited 20 minutes, agent advises from China they can only take payment in RMB or USD, not AED. They offer for one of the Chinese passengers on the booking to pay by WeChat link, but this would not arrive for 2-3 hours. Alternatively, they can transfer me to the Europe call centre, and I can pay in GBP by AmEx – perfect. Transferred and wait another 45 minutes on hold before giving up.

Next day try to call the UAE call centre when it opens to make a payment against the PNR generated last night. The UAE call centre is actually just agents in China, who tell me they don't know why the payment didn't work but they can only take RMB over the phone. Transfer to the Europe call centre again, who advises they can only take AmEx payments in EUR, not GBP. But even then, they could not make a payment against this PNR because it will auto-cancel and there's nothing they can do to stop it, even if they take a payment now...

My assumption is that the Air China UAE website only takes payment by Chinese credit card, but they don't write this down.

How does a company with this level of difficulty in payment stay in business? Presumably almost all the bookings come through CTrip.

Finally booked via AmEx Travel in the UK paying in GBP. Ticket issued but there is no way to Manage my Booking or complete online check-in for any bookings other than those made directly through Air China's website...

Is this airline stuck in 1995?

if you need to speak with Air China again, this page (provided by another user in another CA thread) has some London phone numbers that worked for me.

https://www.airchina.nz/NZ/GB/contact-us/european/

We have mentioned many times, chinese people don't use websites....we have moved past that.

Most bookings done with ctrip or mini programmes on Wechat.

There're several reasons:
1. Mainland Chinese airlines are all on a different reservation system (TravelSky).
2. Few mainland Chinese use airline websites. If they need to interact with the Chinese airlines directly at all, they use their apps instead.
3. Unlike elsewhere, OTAs (ctrip, in particular) completely dominate the travel booking business in China.
4. Not unlike the situation with WeChat, there're terrific third-party travel apps (actually better and more integrated than anything available elsewhere) that mainland Chinese use to manage bookings.

So, the bottom line is that mainland Chinese airlines don't put any resources into upgrading their websites/interfaces.

The US website works (I've managed to make a booking). Otherwise their standalone app sorta works. You can always book on trip.com which is usually happy to take your AEDs.

I feel buying airline tickets through websites in general is a concept as dated as going to a physical machine at the railway station to buy a paper train ticket and then validating it at a machine.

Mainland Chinese think those of us live elsewhere are still living in the 90s...

Have Chinese family so understand what's being said... But at the same time I realise that Chinese consumers are exposed to some of the worst things about travel by virtue of how their market has developed. All the bookings being with OTAs means they are completely at the mercy of OTAs in IRROPS and I have seen in practice they are not very helpful. Often consumers are charged for rebooking even when IRROPS are the airline's fault. Chinese consumers are abstracted almost entirely from very useful concepts like a booking reference / PNR – which they essentially don't use. The Air China app doesn't work unless you log in with PhoenixMiles, meaning practices that are universally understood elsewhere like adding your trip on an airline's app while preserving the frequent flyer number of a different airline in the same alliance are basically impossible. Or viewing the booking of a trip bought through a different channel.

I sort of get it – use the WeChat mini program if you can – fine. But it's an airline, a business which is necessarily international. So shouldn't the website work for non-Chinese passengers?

Also – when I described the problems I was having, the advice from multiple Air China call centre agents was to try booking on the official Air China website. They struggled to understand that that was exactly what I was already doing.

In any event, the flights have now been cancelled due to the security situation and AmEx is voiding the ticket to claw back the pending transaction. Otherwise they advised me a refund from Air China would take two billing cycles...

To be honest, we are. In Germany we are still using ADSL in most areas and every village has a brick-and-mortar travel agency. Documents are printed in triplicate and stamped at the préfecture.

The chinese aviation market is so big, they do not need to cater so much to international customers. To be honest though, CA is not the best compared to MU or CZ when it comes to making it easy for foreigners. I'm more open to different things so I've gone ahead and just adopted using mini programmes and their local applis to book mainland Chinese flights, although I have not flown CA due to my alliance being with Skyteam. I've used the CA mini-programme to shop for flights though and it works fine.

For IRROPS, my understanding is that ctrip/trip does a better job than mainland Chinese airlines, unlike the situation elsewhere. Because of its dominance, ctrip has a lot more sway with the mainland Chinese airlines than OTAs elsewhere have with airlines. For example, it can change and accommodate you on its own to a different airline during IRROPS.

The Chinese system certainly works differently than we're used to, and it's sometimes problematic for those of us living elsewhere. As mlin32 mentioned, the Chinese domestic market is so big that its airlines haven't seen the necessity, or made necessary effort, to cater to non-Chinese passengers. They should and I hope they will as they grow internationally, though.

Yes get wechat, then get into Air China mini program on wechat. (I have my interface in Chinese) - but there is a button that says something to the effect of online check in/seat assignment and that's where you can get seats assigned. (I bought my ticket on Air China official iPhone app because the website kept going back to the first page after I entered origin and destination.) Enter the ticket number and then name and then passport number you used against the ticket and you can go through.

For seat assignments, they only do this ONCE - you can't then look up a booked seat assignment, let alone change it.

Use UMEtrip for everything

Yes, if you can read Chinese. It's the official app of TravelSky, the reservation system for all mainland Chinese airlines.

I hear you loud and clear... this might be of some help:

Confirm booking for Shenzhen Airlines!?!

So I had a similar problem where I was entering my payment information but when clicking purchase it kicked me back to the home page. I noticed that it has assigned me a PNR even before entering my payment information and when I went to rebook it shows that the seats I originally booked are taken. I don't see any pending charges on my credit card/no confirmation emails so I'm not sure if this PNR will drop off or if I need to call to make sure this booking didn't go through?