Six Reasons NEVER to Fly Air China (even without a child)

1) Booking is a nightmare. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was unable to purchase a ticket for Karam at www.airchina.com as he was under 2, but when I called the airline office, they gave me different information on how to add him on, one representative actually telling me that I had to call a travel agent to do it. Plus, wait times for the Sydney office on the phone were 20 minutes on average.

2) There was absolutely no consideration for the fact that I was traveling with a child and that their bassinets were practically useless (See this post on bassinets). I received no help at the booking office and was left at the mercy of the lady at the check-in counter. As my husband has status with Star Alliance, they finally agreed to give us a set of four seats and block off the ones in the middle. I was not so lucky on the way back – the moron at the check-in counter put Karam and I in a seat of three with someone on the end seat, even though there were many adults on sets of four seats with two seats between them on the flight. Plus, it was right at the end of the cabin, which means I was one of the last to come out (more on that here).

3) The English levels of the staff, ground and in-flight, are very low, making anything but your basic needs very hard to meet. Here in Sydney, the outsource their check-in and boarding to Qantas staff, who has zero incentive to help out AC passengers. Even at the business class desk, we had a lady who was barely polite, who kept passing the buck to “Air China”, which is where we thought we were checking in!

4) Our flight to Shanghai was disastrous: we couldn’t land in Shanghai because of bad weather and were re-routed to Hang Zhou which is about forty-five minutes away. They held us on the ground for FOUR hours, while Air China decided what to do with us. Finally, after passengers started making a noise, they decided to let us off at Hang Zhou and arrange a bus to Shanghai, a two-hour ride. It was one thirty am by the time we got into the bus and at four am, it let us off in a deserted spot in the city center with not a car in sight. Resourceful passengers started calling cabs, friends and families, and we had to rely on a Mandarin-speaking fellow passenger to help us out. Could happen to any airline, you say? Qantas landed on schedule the prior evening, just as we were meant to do. We were supposed to be in the hotel by 9 pm – we made it by 5 am the next morning, thanks to Air China’s bureaucracy and inefficiency.

5) Given how air travel has evolved today, even in economy, Air China aircrafts are lame. The entertainment system is seriously obsolete, the seats are uncomfortable and even first class looks shabby.

6) They don’t have milk on board!! I understand that Asians as a race are largely lactose intolerant but how can you not have milk on a 10 hour international flight?!! This did it for me, I will admit!

Overall, a horrible experience. Avoid like the plague. Even the Chinese people on board were complaining, so it doesn’t sound like it’s a source of national pride either.