Flight routing
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- 4CZ329: Guangzhou (CAN) → Vancouver (YVR) B789
As this was a transfer flight, we couldn't comment on the check in experience. The flight experience was also more or less the same as the inbound flight (see CZ330). This review will contain mostly pictures of the Premium Lounge in Guangzhou Baiyun T2 International.
PREMIUM LOUNGE Guangzhou Baiyun (Terminal 2)
The premium lounge is quite easy to find in the expansive terminal 2. Follow the premium lounge arrow, look for the beef noodle restaurant with someone hand pulling noodles, the escalators leading up to it is directly across. Interestingly the name of this lounge in Chinese is "First Class Lounge".
Upstairs, the lounge is side by side with an Aerotel transit hotel. The transit hotel is charging 1000RMB (175USD) for a 6 hour stay. Anyways the lounge is very new and spacious from the outside. With a quick swipe of the priority pass, we are in.
The first room you will see is for tea tasting, wish we had time to try it.
Inside, it had marble flooring through out, plenty of seating, and a large dining area. There was also an area with massage seats, however it was closed during our visit. Generally it was an above average experience, compared to some of the "First Class Lounges" in other Chinese airports.
The food options are quite good for a paid lounge. First we have a cooked to order station which was serving Hong Kong style fish ball noodles.
The hot food stations has soups, staples, and proteins. Most of the dishes were quite tasty and I really liked the soy sauce fish. The desserts are inside a cooler so you will need to ask the barista to get it. Maybe this is a way to prevent people from taking more than they need? Speaking of barista, I didn't get a chance to try the coffee from the espresso machine. A nice addition though.
The alcohol and sugary drinks are inside a fridge. It has Tsingdao as well as Asahi.
Around this time a staff member showed up and asked us to stop taking photos. So they either don't want competing lounges to see the layout, or they just want to ensure the privacy of the guests.
Boarding
Outside of the boarding gate, there are some kind of promotion going for massage chairs. You can get a one time 5 min massage in exchange for your Wechat account information. I think they can only be activated with Wechat. You need Wechat to do anything in China these days…
The B787-9 deserves its own spot.
ONBOARD experience
Service was more of less the same as the outbound leg (CZ330), so not much more to add here.
First meal consisted of chicken rice and a sauceless pasta with beef.
Second meal was beef with rice and a chicken dish with celery.
I'm think the Chinese options tasted alright, however pasta was completely missing sauce, and pairing tomato based chicken with celery was weird.
The flight arrived 50 minutes earlier than scheduled in Vancouver. Yay to strong tail wind.
Hi VFMLife, thanks for this report and the whole series. Once again a decent product for the good price you were able to get. The Chinese carriers definitely have some good deals on TPAC and have improved their overall products.
The lounge looks pretty decent...seems huge! Priority Pass has some really nice options outside of the US...within, not so much. The meals look ok, though all that purple seems inconsistent with CZ's branding.
I love that livery on the Dreamliner. I see your bird was still sporting a SkyTeam logo...I guess it's going to take a while to get rid of those. Maybe they're waiting to replace them with oneworld logos? ?
Either way, as an AA flyer, I'm glad CZ and AA have strengthened their partnership as it gives me more options to Asia now. I'm selfish like that haha
Thanks again for sharing!
I didn't even notice that Skyteam logo, good eye.... think China Southern is pushing for its home hub of Guangzhou to be a transfer hub. There were a lot of passengers going to India on the flight from Vancouver. This puts them in direct competition with CX, so I'm not sure if CX would allow that CZ that oneworld membership.
Agreed that PP works better outside of US. Very worth it at SIN, I don't know any other airport with 11 PP lounges ran by competing companies. Maybe DXB? I have not been.
Good point about CX...they definitely wouldn't be happy with CZ joining ow. There have been rumours about CX wanting to leave ow for a long time, and that would probably push them over the edge. Definitely don't want CX to leave!