Airlines in China

Airline in China

 

When you travel in China, more or less, you will take the domestic plane from one place to another. You may know Air China, China Eastern Airline ,China Southern Airline or other domestic airlines. So which airlines in China is your best choice? In fact, Airlines industry in China is one kind of monopolization, the majority of airlines in China are owned by government. Without a intense competition, all the airlines service are almost the same, just fine, not WOW. Sometimes, the service is somewhat of a dice roll. Service on an airline can vary greatly based on the route. For the same route provided by the same airline, you may meet a nice and kind attendant this time, but encounter a long time delay the next time. Nowadays, you can easily read the reviews about the airlines from internet and get the general idea. From airlinequality.com, you will know how the service of the top airlines in China is. Air China, China Eastern Airline and China Southern Airline all get 3 star .Only Hainan airline gets a 4 star.

 

I have taken 10 more times airplane in China. Personally, the airlines I like most is Xiamen Airline and I do not like China Southern airline most. I have a very good impression with Xiamen airline. One day in 2004, I took an early morning flights from Xiamen to Chongqing. As this was my third times taking the plane, I did not know that I should arrive at the airport at least 30 minutes before the departure time. When I was checking in and changing the boarding card 15 minutes before the plane took off, the counter attendant asked me be hurry. At the same time, he noticed the security staff to check me first. Thank goodness, few people waited at the security, the security staff recognized me and let me pass the security quickly. Finally, I got on the plane 5 minutes before take-off. But this is not always happen. Last year, I took Southern Airlines from Hanghzou to Xiamen. As the traffic jams in Hang Zhou, I would be late. Usually, 80% of the airplanes I have taken were delay for 30 or more minutes, the reason is always "due to the airlines control by Civil Aviation Administration of China". One the way to the airport, I expected that the plane should delay this time. When the bus arrived at the airport, I was running to the Southern airline counter and I was told that the boarding card was stopped to release!! OMG,the plane was on time!! Not matter how I explained, the answer was sorry,sorry,sorry. It wasted me five hundreds RMB which was a large sum of money to me.

 

Everybody cares the airline safety. It just like buying lottery. No one can 100% guarantees that which airline in China is the safest. But it seems that China Eastern Airlines have more accident records these years. While I was writing this article, there was a bad news about China Eastern Airline. Reported by Strait Times 19 September,2010, the China Eastern Airlines plane caught fire five minutes after take-off. No one was hurt on Shanghai-bound flight MU568, which had left Singapore on schedule at 4.35pm.

Thank goodness! I hope this will not happen again!

 

Airlines	Code	Logo
Air China	CA
China Eastern Airline	MU
China Southern Airline	CZ
Hainan Airline	HU
Xiamen Airline	MF
Shanghai Airline	FM
Shangdong Airline	SC
Sichuan Airline	3U
Shenzhen Airline	ZH