I am not apologising for bringing up this thread again but this weekend I was taking a trip from Guangzhou to Luzhou and return. It was an Air China flight and this route could not be described as one of their blue riband routes. Being a professional pilot and very experienced SLF I decided to assess the service as impartially as I could.
The outbound sector was CA4340 departing Guangzhou at 1840. Guangzhou is enormous terminal and when I checked in it was discovered that the travel agent had misspelt my name so it did not agree with my passport. The check-in girl told me to wait, went off to some office and returned three minutes later with everything corrected and chopped.
The chariot was a 737-300. It had been around a bit because it still had ashtrays in the armrests. Despite this the interior was immaculate and looking along the wing surfaces it was as clean as could be expected. There were the inevitable sooty streaks from the corners of wing panels which can only be expected with flying in Chinese industrial pollution. Despite the age of the aircraft the seat belts were effectively brand new.
We pushed back at 1839. During the taxi out flap extension was smooth with no juddering, something I have seen with western aircraft. The passenger brief was live and bi-lingual and was clearer and more understandable than the last passenger brief that I had on a British Airways domestic flight which was in some Commonwealth accent. This route being somewhat down the bottom of the seniority list apart from the purser the girls were straight out of the box. Despite this I was impressed by their firmness with the passengers. Elderly Chinese men do not like being told what to do by a slip of a girl but they weren’t taking any excuses.
Habitually on Chinese aircraft the seatbelt signs are on continuously and people wander off to the toilet regardless. When turbulence is encountered there is a warning from up front and then they whip everybody back to their seats. I took the opportunity to walk up and down and EVERY seatbelt/no smoking light worked as did all the cabin and Exit lights. The only exception being above row 20 DEF where the reading light panel did not have them incorporated. The only technical fault I could find was that my ash tray handle had broken off the defunct ashtray.
The VOR letdown and landing was as good as could be expected as we went into moderate to severe turbulence at the start of the descent. There were no indications of over controlling and the landing was a real beaut..
Luzhou it a small agricultural city of about 9 million and the airport has no more than a dozen or so movements a day. Ten years ago it was a collection of wooden sheds but now it has a modern fully glazed terminal building some three stories high. The flight No was CA 4351, departing at 1525. The check in was electronic, again the error on my e-ticket corrected in two minutes and we were boarded. No air bridges this time so one has to walk. Again a 737-300, Reg B2951. On the walk out I observed two modern medium sized fire appliances fully crewed. This is in contrast to Karratha, Western Australia, with similar movements plus their oil related helicopter traffic, who have to call up the local volunteer fire brigade some 12 kilometres distant if the have an accident/incident. That is assuming there is somebody there because ATC is not manned.
No ashtrays this time. The seatbelts were older, possibly a bit stiffer than I would have liked but they adjusted satisfactorily. The row in front of me had some bits missing off the rear of the armrests that had been taped over but apart from that nothing else attracted my attention. At 1523 the engines were started and at 1525 it was off chocks. Again the service was first class and again all the lights worked.
The air bridge was connected at 1707 and we all went to carousel No 9 to await our baggage. I noticed a sudden exodus of people to carousel No 11 and one of the ground staff almost ran over to tell me that the carousel had been changed. Despite this I had my bag in my hand at 1716.
Yet again, an excellent experience flying in China. The safety record speaks for itself. Badly trained crews could not achieve that. The aircraft were on their fifth and fourth sectors and on time. Badly maintained aircraft cannot manage that. There are a lot of spiteful and unsubstantiated comments going around about Chinese aviation. Perhaps some of the perpetrators should look in a mirror.