Review of Azerbaijan Airlines flight from Baku to Beijing in Economy

A Flight Down Memory Lane

Hello and welcome to another FR! 

After 2 weeks of traveling around the Caucasus, it's finally time to head to China, where I'll spend the next 2 months. This is something I do every year (you can find the first FR of last year's trip here). This flight is the first one I booked and is why I went to Azerbaijan and Georgia. 

For those unaware, Azerbaijan Airlines (or AZAL for short) is the flag carrier of Azerbaijan. Despite its small size, the airline operates an incredibly diverse fleet consisting of 1 Boeing 757, 2 Boeing 767s, and 2 Boeing 787s along with its Embraer E190 and Airbus A320 series aircraft. The airline is also the last operator of the A340-500, having 2 in its fleet. However, they appear to be out of service with the airline intending to replace them with brand-new 787s. 

Our flight will be on one of AZAL's 2 767s, which is nice as there aren't a lot of the type left in service (at least outside of North America). This, combined with the low cost (€250 one way, including seat selection and checked luggage), made it an amazing deal. 

I aim to offset all of my CO2 emissions from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard.

Baku Heydar Aliyev International Airport (GYD)

You join me in the taxi approaching the airport. A taxi takes around 40 minutes from the city and only cost around ₼12 ($7) on Lyft. 

The driver dropped me in the car park of Terminal 2 (probably because I didn't specify the terminal…). It's not a huge problem as it's only a 5-minute walk and allows me to get a few photos of the terminal from afar. 

The drop-off area. The building is gorgeous. 

Also… notice red taxis parked on the right? For some odd reason, Baku uses British taxis. The red ones in the distance are the new electric models produced by LEVC (short for London EV Company, formerly The London Taxi Corp Ltd.) I don't know whose idea this was but it's such a weird sight (especially for someone living in London). 

Not only does the terminal look amazing from the outside, but it's also really nice from the inside. I love how open it is and how the upper floors curve seamlessly to match the exterior. 

Check-in also has a unique layout. It's essentially split into 2 sections, one section for AZAL flights and the other for the rest. The middle is for arrivals. It's a smart (and easy to understand) system that condenses everything into one floor (albeit helped by the airport's small-ish size). 

This is the check-in area for foreign carriers. It's mostly Russian airlines at this time of day. 

View of the check-in area from the upper floor. Check-in took 5 minutes as I was one of the first in line. 

There's also a mini food court here. It consists of a McDonald's and a small cafe. There's not a lot of spare seating and it's filthy as no-one bothers to clean up the table and floors. 

After a quick stop for some food (I didn't eat anything in the city), it's time to go through security. There's an amazing view of the apron here with our 767 in prime position. 

(I normally have this section later on but this is honestly the best photo I'm gonna get of our plane.)

Some information about our plane:

Type: Boeing 767-300ER
Registration: 4K-AZ82
First flight: 8 June 2012
Age: ~12 years
Config: C22/Y176

A Boeing 767 delivered to AZAL in June 2012 and is named 'Koroglu', after Koroglu Rahimov - a National Hero of Azerbaijan,  celebrated for his actions in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. 

Security only took 10 minutes and here we are airside. 

Just like the rest of the airport, this place is really pretty as well. I love the consistency of the colors and how the stores blend into the overall structure - unlike the massive malls in Abu Dhabi and Istanbul. 

Photo of the duty-free stores. This is a fairly small terminal so food options airside are very limited. I'm glad I had a quick McDonald's landside. 

Terrible view of the apron. Unfortunately, with the curved slope of the terminal, it's impossible to get close to the windows (as it's all blocked off). It looks great from afar but isn't great practically (at least for someone who likes planespotting haha). 

Photo of the gates. There aren't a lot of people, which is great. Another thing I need to mention is the airport Wi-Fi. It's very unreliable and even if you manage to connect, it's very slow. 

With around an hour until boarding, I decided to visit the Premium Bank Lounge. It's a tiny lounge on the bottom floor next to the bus gates (you can see the entrance on the right). The food 'options' consist of that tiny counter on the left with drinks on the 2nd counter further away. It's a pretty terrible lounge honestly. 

Another terrible view of the apron from here. 

The flight

Flight time today will be around 7 hours and here's our route. 

Boarding started on time and here's a photo of the IFE (which we'll look into later on) and tray table.

On each seat is a mini amenity kit. It's a set of earphones, a blindfold, and a traffic-light do-not-disturb sticker. Amazingly, while an amenity kit is available, there's no pillow or blanket. You can request a (very cheap plastic) blanket from the crew after takeoff but for a long-haul flight, it's pretty bad. 

First view out of the window. You can see security (where I took the photo of our plane) on the left. 

Pushback around 15 minutes late. It's honestly so impressive how nice the terminal looks at night. 

Bye bye Azerbaijan! 

Shortly after takeoff, the crew came around with a wet wipe, which isn't something commonly seen in economy these days. 

And dinner is served! 

The options were chicken or beef. I chose the chicken. It is chicken in cooking oil with a trace amount of salt. Seriously. It's completely tasteless apart from the smell of cooking oil. The only positive thing I can mention about it is that it's edible. Along with the chicken, there's raw sliced carrot with a piece of coriander as a 'salad' (I've got no idea why airlines try to pass off raw vegetables with no seasoning as a salad… it's not), a chocolate cake (very nice), and a bun (alright). All in all, not a great meal but edible. 

With dinner done, let's have a look at the contents of the seatback pocket, which includes a safety card…

… and an air sickness bag. No inflight magazine sadly. 

Before I sleep, we'll have a look at the IFE. 

The first thing I need to mention is that there's no remote. Normally for these older IFE systems, you'd find a remote as the touchscreen on these systems is terrible. It was infuriating how many times I had to press the same button for something to happen. By the end of the flight, I discovered that the only way to get it to work consistently was to press my nails hard into the screen… which wasn't fun. 

There's a limited selection of Hollywood and Azerbaijanian movies with a 'kids' section… that consists of only cartoons. It's nice if you have a 3 year old but there's nothing for kids older than that to watch.

By the way, this IFE review took around 10 minutes as my arm got tired of pressing the same thing over and over again. 

TV shows aren't available as it's 'blocked'.

A miscellaneous section that only shows the AZAL logo. Very helpful if you happen to forget what airline you're flying on but not too useful for anything else. 

However, a standard moving map is available. 

After that, I slept for around 3 hours and woke up as we entered Xinjiang. I've seen this part of the world (from the air) a lot as I used to fly into Beijing once every 1-2 years since I was tiny. 

The crew also came around with a breakfast snack. The options were chicken or cheese. This is the chicken option, which is a pretty boring sandwich. Nothing special but I'm really not expecting anything after that pretty woeful dinner. 

An amazing view of Shengle International Airport. It's under construction and will serve the city of Hohhot (呼和浩特), Inner Mongolia. 

It is ridiculously similar in design/layout to Beijing's Daxing Airport… just smaller. 

It's kinda hard to keep track of progress in the air. This is most likely the city of Ulanqab (乌兰察布) - a city to the east of Hohhot. 

It's pretty crazy how many industries there are scattered all across the country. 

On the right, you can see a ton of wind turbines in the mountains, and on the left, a couple of industries. It pretty much sums up China's goal of reducing emissions while keeping a core part of its economy alive. 

I also love the pattern on the winglet. I mentioned in my last FR how AZAL has one of my favorite liveries - I just like how the different shades of blue fit together. 

Starting our descent into Beijing Capital. Apparently, if you fly into Beijing Capital when the weather's good, you get to see the Great Wall during descent. I personally have never seen it but I've been reliably informed by family members (although I remain skeptical).

The view during approach isn't great sadly. 

Short final. 

Welcome to China! We arrived 30 minutes late. 

Taxiing past a Dalian Airlines Boeing 737-800. The airline is owned by Air China, hence the Air China logo on the tail. 

Beijing Capital's Terminal 2. This terminal was the Skyteam terminal with China Eastern, China Southern (they've now moved to Daxing), Air France/KLM, and Hainan. I'm not sure if AF/KLM still uses T2 but these days it's mainly used by China Eastern and Hainan. 

Almost all Chinese airports (at least in the past) had signs saying the city on top of the terminal. This is also true of all railway and intercity bus stations. (The red characters there saying 北京 (Beijing))

I have no idea why AZAL uses T2 here. It makes no sense considering 90% of international airlines go to the much newer and larger T3. It makes even less sense considering that the airport is much quieter now with so many airlines moving to Daxing. 

Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)

Before we start, I have to mention that I hate this terminal. It's not because of anything wrong with it, just that it looks so outdated compared to T3. I just feel sad every time I come here thinking how much nicer T3 is…

Walking to baggage reclaim. 

Immigration was very fast, which is unsurprising considering the lack of international flights this early in the morning. 

And here we are landside. It's so much quieter now that Daxing's taken a lot of the traffic away. 

I'll end this FR here. I won't be doing a lot of flying in China - I prefer taking the train as it's cheaper, easier, and actually runs on time. There's a tourism bonus of my time in Baku - feel free to check that out. Thanks for reading and see you in the next one! ;)