137 reviews
Howdy!
Yes, I know. I am going to China for the ten thousandth time…
My grandparents own a vacation house on the island of Hainan in China, and I used to visit every winter when I was living in Harbin, China. It was the good old days when I can live carefree and play on the beautiful beaches of Sanya for two months…This trip for sure became nostalgic, and I was super excited for this.
The problem is that, my mom and I live in Los Angeles now. The paradise used to be just a short 5 hour domestic hop away, now we have to fly 13 hours first, then connecting to another 5 hour flight…Yeah. It's not exactly "close". When we were booking flights only a few weeks in advance, the prices were floating around $2,000 round trip per person.. IN ECONOMY… We ended up with China Southern connecting through Shenyang, the largest city in my home state Manchuria. On the return, we tried Hainan airlines, China's only SKYTRAX 5 star airline, on the way back to LA. We booked our tickets on Amex Travel, which gave us about 20,000 MR points.
Enjoy!
Tom Bradley International Terminal
Good evening from LAX. Took us about an hour to drive 2 miles off of I-405 on Century Blvd…
And I'm back here again.
Check-in area was pretty empty. The agents were just finishing checking-in the earlier flight to CAN.
Still plenty of SkyTeam logos here… Won't be seeing any of those next week!
Check-in was very painful…
Since I booked my flights on Amex Travel, I couldn't reserve seats.
Me: Can I have a window seat and the aisle seat next to it please?
Agent: Sure.
(5 mins later)
The agent couldn't figure out how to get seats, so she called up her supervisor…
By the time this problem got resolved, 10 minutes had passed. Apparently the lady wasn't familiar with the system, so the boss had to teach her how to check us in..
TSA fun
Walking to TSA. It's a longer walk than what I had expected…
They had dogs sniffing our bags too…
Not many people in line today. Great!
You know the drill.
Passed through TSA in 5 minutes. KAL lounge was closed for Priority Pass at the moment.
And about 50 people standing outside of PF CHANG… I think they were all Priority Pass users…
Love it how "Priority" isn't "prioritized".
Times tower
Virgin Australia Boeing B777-300ER
Qantas Airbus A380-800
China Airlines Boeing B777-300ER to Taipei
China Southern Airlines Airbus A380-800 to Guangzhou
Air China Boeing B777-300ER to Beijing
Here she is, a 0.7 year old Airbus A330-300 that will take to me Shenyang. By the way, this is the third ever FLIGHT from LA to my home state Manchuria.
Gate 154 this time
Flying Food Group Truck
Somehow every Qantas flight that day was delayed.
Gate lice are already lining up.
Walking down the jetty again.
The cabin looks very fresh and nice.
Seat (10/10)
Legroom was excellent.
The recline was very generous.
The new Recaro CL3710 was very comfortable overall.
Here's my seat. A window seat on the second to last row.
The IFE screen is absolutely massive!
Here's the galley of this A333. I feel like the 333 galley is way longer than that of the 332.
Love the A330. It just looks so elegant.
Massive, MASSIVE IFE screen.
No individual air vents for those of y'all who run cold.
And yes CZ offers wifi on their new 333s, 359s, and 789s. More on that later.
Safety video
And without further delay, we were on our way to Shenyang!
West Ventura.
Liar, the wifi does NOT work. (yet)
Dinner (Mid-night snack?) time
This is the best EVER meal I had EVER had in 2018…Marvelous for a 2AM snack.
The braised beef was very tender and flavourful.
The main course was very good. The gravy was very expressive and I could clearly taste the meat.
Time to sleep.
Good morning from eastern Russia.
The airshow was very responsive. I could view my flight from lots of perspectives. I actually slept for a decent 5 hours thanks to the comfortable padding and the recline.
Unlike most Chinese airlines, China Southern offered many movies and TV-shows to watch and to stream on your own device.
Two movies later, the cabin light was turned on and breakfast service initiated. The wifi worked for only about 30 minutes during the flight and the connection was very slow. Still, better than nothing.
Here's the breakfast. It was very delicious just like the dinner! I am very impressed with CZ's catering.
Here's my Mom's congee. She said it was very tasty, and there was a generous amount of scallops.
Flying over my hometown, Harbin. See you in July 2019!!!
The bathroom was kept clean during the flight. It has all the basic amenities.
They had disposable cup for some reason…Bring your own mouthwash! (I bought mine at Walmart for $1)
Tried my best taking these shots…
40 minutes left.
Descending into Shenyang.
Downtown? I think? I couldn't tell
Parked next to a China Southern A320
Hello China! It has been almost 5 months already.
Going to the transfer hall.
Wow transferring here is really convenient. There were 4 dedicated check in counters, and we were all set in 5 minutes…
The END. My next flight, Shenyang to Haikou on the Airbus A321, will be posted soon!
The seat was AMAZING. (10/10) The food was DELICIOUS! However, 1 point off for not having mid flight refreshments.(9/10) The cabin crew was very genuine in a Manchurian way, and they were very professional as well. I dropped my Andrew Jackson on the floor, and one of the FA nudged me and ask me if it belonged to me. (10/10) The entertainment was mind blowing (not kidding). There was a large selection, and the Wifi was free tho not much useful. (9.5)
Overall, I was very impressed by my favourite Chinese airline China Southern on its A333E international product. It was also very cool to fly a 5 day old route, and I am looking forward to my next flight on CZ! Thanks for reading!
18 Comments
Sorry to hear about the Wifi not working - last time I flew to China with MU from YVR to PVG had wifi that worked the entire flight but was painfully slow at times. I heard CZ stopped taking online applications for inflight wifi so hopefully they are still offering free wifi on their flights.
That's rough. I try 105 to Sepulveda sometimes but it doesn't seem faster. It really is a busy time of night for LAX, as your photos of all of the heavies at TBIT confirms.
Impressive legs for the A330-300 on LAX-SHE. It's quite new so undoubtedly a 242t variant.
That's unfortunate considering all of the other extra amenities CZ have included.
Really cool to be in the first week of operations and going to your home State.
Indeed! The cabin looks really sharp as a whole.
Thanks again for sharing this flight. Happy flying.
But you gotta be careful with your captions. There are some commenters around who criticise those of us who prefer to put captions at the bottom of photos and leave "constructive criticism".
I do find it more effective ?
Thanks for sharing!
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