Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitation!

[sydunipete]

How does a simple trip become a far more complex undertaking?

Well it started as a short package tour in China but soon became an almost around the world extravaganza of wine, Star Alliance J flights, Chinese domestic Economy legs, lost luggage, found luggage, the Chinese Magnetic Levitation train, extensions to my list of pet hates about fellow travellers (spitting, slurping and pushing could be olympic sorts in China and most people there could spit, slurp or push for their country!), inconsistent onboard safety rules (iPhones not ok, iPads ok), two legs on the same airframe, 3 different Air China long haul business class standards, lounges and a lot of fun.

So it started as a simple SYD - PVG - SYD tour. It pretty quickly extended to SYD - PVG - XIE - PEK - SYD. Then as anybody who has justified a quick European jaunt to a loved one or employer (or both) knows, flying to Europe in J is only a few more cents than flying to just Asia. So I took this opportunity to visit my extended family who live by Lake Como and the Swiss border region of Northern Italy. So make that SYD - PVG - XIE - PEK - MXP - PEK - SYD.

I also had a few SQ award points about to expire, so what better time to burn a few on a good value intra Europe J trip. Which cities represented the best value for points, held some interest to me and provided an Air China open jaw option for the return flight home? It was between Moscow and Reykjavik. I chose Reykjavik and with the necessary connections the final itinerary looked like this:

SYD - PVG : Air China J class
PVG - PVG : High speed magnetic levitation train (431 kmph without leaving the ground)
PVG - XIE : Shanghai Airlines Y Class
XIE - PEK : China Eastern Y Class
PEK - MXP : Air China J Class
MXP - VIE : Austrian short haul J Class
VIE - OSL : Tyrolean short haul J Class
OSL - KEF : SAS short haul J Class
KEF - OSL : SAS short haul J Class
OSL - ARN : SAS very short haul J Class (of a fashion)
ARN - PEK : Air China J Class (if you could call it that)
PEK - SYD : Air China New J Class

Fasten your safety belt, ensure your tray table is fastened, seat is in the upright position and enjoy the flight as I update the trip details with photos and maybe even a video of two of the trip over the next few days.

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

CA176 - SYD to PVG. 16 Oct 11. Seat 12D. A330-200. 11:20 scheduled departure.



B-6093 is an Air China aircraft painted in Star Alliance colours. It was waiting at gate 54 to take me to Shanghai to commence a holiday which included 3 cities of mainland China. I'd heard mixed reports about Air China so it was with some trepidation that I prepared for this flight. I'm used to SQ, TG, SK, LH and UA in J Class and even though the price was right I was hoping some standards would be maintained.

Service before the flight was a worry. My pre-booked seat showed up on expert flyer as unallocated and a web site used by my travel agent said seat was unconfirmed despite a low loading factor. Air China could also not confirm use of new or old equipped aircraft. I'd seen press released that Sydney was served on alternate days by a remodelled business class and neither my outgoing nor return trip were scheduled to be on a remodelled day (but this was shown to the wrong in practice).

My flight also coincided with a bike ride through the streets of Sydney and the path crossed every reasonable option I had to get me to the airport. Now I love bicycles and all that, but with the millions we spent building an Olympic precinct purpose build for sports, don't you think they (and other sports) could use that rather than the perfect good roads needed for automobile traffic? in a working city?

But my concern wasn't well founded and I made it to the airport with lots of time to spare. Check-in opened 3 hours before departure and everything was smooth sailing. I was looked after by a QANTAS staff member who gave me my express customs card, boarding pass and lounge invitation. Service wasn't up to Asiana levels, but ok so far. The lounge was the Air NZ lounge which is my favorite in Sydney. Free wifi, good food, a reasonable selection of drinks and a view of the tarmac add the the interest of the place. My only complaint was the paucity of newspapers and the toilets were crowded. This was probably due to a busy day for air traffic between Australia and NZ due to the semi final between our two countries in the world cup taking place today. The terminal was full of green and gold jerseys. Luckily the Air NZ lounge wasn't a mecca for al black fans. Of course I had to pass through the shopping mall that is Sydney international airport, but I escaped that reasonable unscathed.

The express card at customs didn't count for much. The queue master was waving people from the poverty queue through while us elite travellers with express cards waited. It wasn't a big problem though with the light traffic just creating a queue of 3.

The entire flight boarded through door 1L following the boarding call made in the lounge. It was great timing with economy boarding just completing as I arrived. On board service was polite with an FA offering to unwrap the provided slippers for me. The seats are only average. There is no personal storage space for anything bigger than a magazine. My iPad had to sit vertically on the seat beside me. The whole first row was occupied by Chinese people who seemed to be very familiar with proceedings so I assumed they were airline personnel. The aircraft was a 2 class configuration

Champagne (Cattier Brut) offered upon boarding which was much better than was provided in the lounge (Brancott Estate Brut Cuvée which just didn't cut it for me). However the tide was out today (in fact it was low tide on Champagne pond on every Air China flight I took).



Newspapers including an Australian Chinese language paper were available. By the time I was seated we had been counted several times by people with counters. Who knows why, but it seemed excessive. Hot towels handed out in time for another head count. Business class cabin was about 60% full so it appears they don't upgrade everyone like other airlines. But there is another theory. This flight and subsequent ones all had several breakages of equipment, IFE, seats, tray tables. So they may keep load factors low to allow for redundancy so they can move people around! It was rather shabby with several loose panels and missing parts. I just hope the business end of the engineering is maintained better.

Business class was 2-2-2 configuration with just 4 rows in the main business class cabin. These was enough leg room for my 192cm frame.



Push back 15mins late. During taxiing I saw 4 A380s which must be a full complement for Sydney. Two of them were SQ and were parked as opposite ends of this terminal. So at least one flight had a long walk through the terminal.

Drink and food orders were taken during the safety video from the wine list provided. French and Chinese wines were available. All meals had to be ordered at this time and there was a fair selection of Chinese and western choices available. I chose pork ribs and Hokkien noodles for dinner.

The English part of the announcements was barely recognisable. I picked up "seat belts" and that's about it. The nose wheel camera gave a good view of taxiing which then changed to downward facing. Chinese airlines are not good at cabin discipline and a few people were wandering around while seat belt sign was on. This was to be a common theme during my next few legs.

After lunch window shades were pulled down for this daytime flight, but in another common theme, people kept pulling them up and down. Surely up or down is ok, playing with them isn't?

Movie selection and performance of the AVOD is a major downfall. If you like Chinese movies you might be right at home. Otherwise bring an iPad with some movies loaded. This is what I did which raised an interesting situation. iPhone's are not permitted, even in flight mode, which is why the photos stop half way through the flight, yet iPads are just fine. They possess very similar electronics and this demonstrates the silliness of some of the current rules. But back to the IFE : it's slow, patchy in usability and the best movie from a very restricted choice was Mr Poppa's Penguins.

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat



Meal service was out of kilter, nuts immediately followed with appetiser.



In fact the whole meal was a sort of world record attempt for the quickest meal service on a flight. Why can't this be done by all airlines on overnight flights? Lunch was just ok. But 6 courses served within 90 mins of push back is not a bad effort at all. Everything was served individually with not a trolley in sight. The drinks all came out individually from the galley too with no chance to view the bottle. This was a bit of a trap too. They didn't have the French white, but instead of saying so they served the Chinese white instead. You could tell because the Chinese white wine was bad. Dry and stringent, thin and unappealing. The Chinese red on the other hand was far better than the French red. It was a Cabernet Sauvignon, that despite what I put down to youth of the vines, it was up there with good Bordeaux selections. This was impressive, but during the trip to come I had some Chinese red wines that we're truly unrecognisable as wine.



There was also a tea list.

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

View attachment 4513



View attachment 4514View attachment 4513

Toilets were clean, inflight magazine is mostly in Chinese with minimal English content, so you can't rely upon the IFE or the magazine for passing the time. Dinner service commence 2 1/2 hours before landing, which isn't required when you've got a world record breaking crew. I would have thought that if breakfast can be served during descent into New York by a first class United crew (as it was on a recent trip for me), these guys could do it while we were taxiing to the gate!

The Hokkien noodles were bland and no alcohol was served with this second meal.

Head phones were not noise canceling, so it might be time for an investment in these gems if you are doing an over night leg. Seat belt sign was on for most of the flight (another theme I was to discover on every chinese flight - but the passengers didn't seem to care).

Landed at 19:20 and deplaned 5 mins later about 15 mins late in all. The Shanghai terminal in brand spanking new and spectacular. It was built for last year's world expo and is yet another example of China's massive scale and capability. Immigration was pretty quick but bags took a while and priority tags seemed to count for little. It was a scrum to get the bags with Chinese crowding the belt (which is my pet hate. Surely everything would be easier if everybody stood a metre or so back from the belt and just moved forward when they saw their bag). But I was in a car on my way through the smog to Shanghai within 30 mins of landing.

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

Hi this is my first TR and I'm struggling with the limitations on photos. Only 4 per post and 8 MB in total for me as a user (or so it seems). Can anybody suggest a way around this? I've got photos of each page of the menu and the wine list for example but with so many flights to document, I can't upload them all.

Any help would be welcome.

 

[RB]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

Hi this is my first TR and I'm struggling with the limitations on photos. Only 4 per post and 8 MB in total for me as a user (or so it seems). Can anybody suggest a way around this? I've got photos of each page of the menu and the wine list for example but with so many flights to document, I can't upload them all.

Any help would be welcome.

I have run into similar problems with trip report photos. Suggest you contact admin & he may be able to increase your space allowance.

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

Sorry, but I've decided to complete the thread at FlyerTalk. Nothing personal, just it's easier to add more pictures to my post and there's some great pictures coming up.

I hope you can check it out there. The link is:

Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitation! - FlyerTalk Forums

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

I've added a post on the Magnetic Levitation train and the Shanghai to Xi'An leg.

 

[TonyHancock]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

It might be worth contacting Admin here. It is a brilliant report and a shame for people here to miss out on it.

I travelled on the MagLev last year and it blew me away..

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

It might be worth contacting Admin here. It is a brilliant report and a shame for people here to miss out on it.

I did. I asked if the restriction of 4 photos per entry could be raised. I haven't received a respponse yet. It's not that the other site is much better, I have to upload the photos to a third party hosting site, then write the report referring to the location of the upload pictures and videos.

Thanks for your kind words and I hope you continue to enjoy the TR. I'll continue to post updates here as I go.

 

[Princess Fiona]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

Great TR, I am following it over on FT. Would be great to see more of your adventures here.
Thanks for posting

 

[anchew]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

Great trip report. Will have to continue reading it on FT.

I agree with your observations on the behavior of the mainland Chinese. On my first visit to China a few years ago, I was completely culture shocked - and I'm ethically Chinese. Suffice to say that ethnic Chinese outside of China don't have very favorable impressions of Da Lu Ren (mainlanders). I was quite surprised that this view is the same around the world - I met some ethnic Chinese Americans and Canadians who held similar views on my recent trip.

On the photo limitations, what I did was I used MS Picture to compress the images and spread my TR across a number of posts.
http://www.australianfrequentflyer....d-trip-photos/mel-sin-pen-xhkg-pek-33724.html

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

XIE to PEK leg added here:


Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitation! - Page 2 - FlyerTalk Forums

 

[drron]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

I have the opposite problem-I just cant get photos to load on FT-had all their experts advising me and nothing worked as they said.I just gave up and so post my TRs here.I do copy some of them to Milepoint but I can get less pics per post there than here where I can get 7-10 pics per post.My work around is probably unique and I was told by one of the photo experts on FT it couldn't possibly work.
I think the secret to getting more pics per post is to downsize them first-mine are downsized to 320-640 pixels on Picassa before posting.Doesn't seem to make a huge difference in quality.

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

Page 2 now includes all the way to Reykjavik.

Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitation! - Page 2 - FlyerTalk Forums

 

[sydunipete]

Re: Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitat

I've now finished the TR over here:

Sydney to Iceland via China. Mostly J, some China Domestic Y and Magnetic Levitation! - FlyerTalk Forums

It includes all my Air China flights, short haul European legs in J class. Sydney to Reykjavik and return.

I hope you enjoy the report and the pics.