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AIR CHINA customer review :  16 December 2009 by A Smith   (Australia)

Biggest disaster of a flight ever. CTU to JZH in economy, on an A319. Scheduled to depart at 6.40, arrived at airport at 5am to discover flight inexplicably delayed with no announcements whatsoever. Furthermore as the aircraft was parked on a remote stand we were all crammed into the tiny waiting area (shared with a China Eastern and Sichuan Air flight - all in all about 400 pax). No information whatsoever except for hollow pre-programmed delya announcements. These announcements did not include why and how long the delay was for. Finally boarding was called and pax started shoving their boarding passes at the poor gate agent. After everyone all trying to board first we sat on the plane for another two hours, again with no announcements, we were served water though, acceptable for a 30 minute flight. After almost 4 and a half hours plane finally departed - remainder of trip uneventful. Terrible management on behalf of both Air China and Chengdu Airport- it was not after I arrived at JZH I was informed through a third party that the delay was due to snow on the runway and a military operation.

AIR CHINA customer review :  13 December 2009 by Chris Solomons   (Australia)

SYD-PEK-SHE return. Business cabin, first impression was that the seats were quite a lot smaller than I'm used to in Business , and the angle of the fully recline position was not great - during the night I kept sliding down the seat, most annoying and made sleeping uncomfortable. Cabin was quite grubby, but this is typical of mainland china airlines, staff ok, nothing great - did the job like robots. Value for money, as this was the most direct flight then the value was not to bad, however I would have preferred SQ for another $500 and 3 hours in hindsight.

AIR CHINA customer review :  26 November 2009 by Alain Kupferman   (France)

Air China is reasonably good, though I would not give them 4 stars for business flight (meal economy type, they must be saving on drinks and desserts, coffee was not offered on a long-haul flight after dinner), staff rather indifferent (that was on the way from Francfort to Beijing) On the way back, I was delayed, coming on Air China from Hangzhou (bad weather in Beijing, will probably appear later in the satistics as pollution-free day) and had to catch a connecting Air China flight to Frankfurt. I was told ground staff would be waiting for me. The Frankfurt flight departed just when we landed. There was no ground staff at the door. Transfer desk is useless: they send you to ticketing, in ticketing, you have to wait in queue (whereby Chinese people do not queue, they just push you away), and when you are done with ticketing, you wait in queue (same style as before) to get accomodation. The whole procedure took almost 3 hours. The hotel is paid by CA, but, even if you fly business class, Air Chinais so stingy that you have to pay a supplement to the hotel in order to have a single room. Air China has no coordination, does not give information and lacks organisation

AIR CHINA customer review :  15 November 2009 by Joerg Schroeder   (Germany)

First class Bejing-Sanya. Air China is efficient and courteous in the air, but very dismal on the ground. Bejing Airport was experiencing heavy snowfall in the morning. All flights were either cancelled or delayed. The Air China staff at the first class counter was not able to tell us what would happen to our afternoon flight. Of course, English skills were lousy. We were asked to return to the counter every 20-30 min. 2 hours later they told us to change terminals because our flight would depart from there. When we arrived at terminal 2 nobody knew anything. So we had to return to terminal 3 again. The incompetent Air China personnel finally told us a new departure time revealing that only one of us could be carried because the flight was overbooked. Not even an economy seating was offered. After 4 hours we managed to have us booked on China Southern to Sanya the next day. The bad handling of our overnight stay at the Airport is another story. Air China simple can’t deal with problems. On the ground customer service or courtesy doesn’t exist.

AIR CHINA customer review :  15 November 2009 by Ivan Jayawan   (Singapore)

PEK-PVG Air Macau plane. Check-in and boarding smooth. No in-flight entertainment, food OK, not especially good. FA's not consistent but still better than local competitors.

AIR CHINA customer review :  8 November 2009 by William Zhou   (Australia)

Sydney-Beijing-London. First impressions after boarding; magnificent, PTV's looked huge. The check in staff arranged a window seat even though we checked in late and she took 5 minutes just getting the seat, but 2 hrs after take off the cramped legroom began to set in. The PTV's only had 5 channels to choose from because it was broken. Worst of all the was the staff - appointing a small baby 2 seats and her mother 2 seats. The baby just was long enough to stretch across one seat, the mother greedily took practically all 3 seats. The PTV's were working Beijing to London and videos were not bad.

AIR CHINA customer review :  1 November 2009 by R McCarthy   (Australia)

PEK-SHA, SHA-HRB Economy Class. Once again, Air China proves to be efficient and courteous in the air, but dismal on the ground. Queues at Beijing Capital Airport were unreasonably long for both flights (especially for domestic flights, where passengers are only required to turn up an hour in advance) and ground staff pretty disinterested. When checking the status of my PEK-SHA flight the night before on the internet, it didn't register as existing! During the check-in experience in the morning, the check-in agent told me that there were only middle seats left (I was there over an hour beforehand). When I boarded, there were at least seven to eight aisle seats free on the aircraft (which had come in from Los Angeles - I don't know if this was the source of the confusion). Upon arrival in SHA, I discovered my suitcase left behind - it took over 14 hours to get to me! No offer of any toiletries (or an apology), I just needed to 'make do'. Again, on the PEK-HRB sector I was told that there were only aisle and middle seats available - despite being there over an hour in advance. The check-in attendant wasn't friendly about it, but rather quite 'matter of fact' - it was clearly an inconvenience having to mention it to me at all. Overall, I don't care much for Air China on the ground. But Air China in the skies is fine. I just wish that training permeated through the whole company.

AIR CHINA customer review :  29 October 2009 by Steven Cao   (China)

Shanghai Hongqiao-Beijing B747, flight was full, departure was delayed for around 20 minutes but arrival on time. Chose Air China instead of China Eastern this time due to expect better service but was disappointed. Dinner served rice & tasteless chicken, no vegetable, no 2nd round drink was served.

AIR CHINA customer review :  13 October 2009 by Fred Dekosser   (Canada)

Air China cancelled the final leg of my flight from Beijing to Singapore a week before the travel date. They never gave me a clear reason. They rebooked me on the same flight the next day. This of course means I suddenly had a 30-hour layover in Beijing airport. I spent four days on the phone with them, explaining that I could not legally stay more than 24 hours in the airport without a visa. They booked a hotel. I explained that I could not GET to the hotel without a visa. They refused to rebook me on another airline. They refused to change my final destination. For two days the manager was "in a meeting" and failed to call me back. I finally had to cancel my entire flight at the last minute and rebook with JAL at my own cost.

AIR CHINA customer review :  6 October 2009 by A Lu   (Japan)

Shanghai Pudong-Tokyo Narita, economy class. 10am flight failed to takeoff after boarding due to mechanical failure. After 7-hour wait, reboarded and failed again mid-takeoff. Kept us on the tarmac for 2 hours, while they figured out what to do, since it seemed they had no idea how to handle the situation. Worst part was surly staff. Didn’t get us into a hotel until after midnight. Couldn’t even get water for baby, who was due past feeding and sleeping time. Communication horrible. No official announcement made to passengers as a group, everything was word-of-mouth rumor. Unbelievably awful experience, ruined a decent vacation.

AIR CHINA customer review :  5 October 2009 by A Johnstone   (Hong Kong)

A tale of two airlines! HKG-PEK operated by Air Macau A321 with CA cabin crew. Delayed departure but constant supply of champagne. Excellent proactive crew, inflight menu, constant drink service. PEK-SZN 74M upper deck. Only drinks offered were red or white wine after nearly 45 minutes. Any top ups had to be asked for. Mediocre meal. No safety checks whatsoever prior to landing. A passenger opposite was still watching his screen on landing and I had two glasses uncollected.

AIR CHINA customer review :  28 September 2009 by R Graham   (Australia)

PEK-MEL via PVG flew in A330 Economy class - group check in took a long time due to Chinese bureaucracy. Seats very uncomfortable, I'm 6 foot and the legroom was very poort. Dinner and breakfast served, fairly mediocre meals. Overall fairly average flight