Review of Shenzhen Airlines flight from Shenzhen to Xi'an in Economy

As I prepared for another business trip in Asia, I stumbled upon a small number of photos from a flight I took earlier this year in September. So here is a short overview of Shenzhen Airlines during an internal flight in China.
My trip starts in Dongguan, an industrial town located midway between Hong Kong and Canton in Southern China. The evening before the flight, my Chinese friend who had been in charge of organizing the trip received an SMS from the airline. It forewarned us that our next day's flight to Xian would be delayed by an hour. So business as usual as regards internal flights in China, I can't remember ever taking a flight with an on time departure and arrival.
The morning of our flight, a cheap and convenient airport bus takes us from Dongguan city center to a very modern Shenzhen Airport. The ride takes a little over an our and a bit.

The check-in hall is extremely impressive. We head to the joint Shenzhen Airlines/China Airlines counters to drop our bags. With no queue at check-in and security we are make our way through to the Shenzhen Airline lounge courtesy of my Star Alliance gold card. By this time, the flight delay announced the evening before is extended by another hour.
At the lounge we are provided with a beeper system that will ring once the flight is ready for boarding. Very convenient and saves the hassle of checking the boards for the latest information on the boarding time for the flight.

The path to the spacious lounge looks a bit like this:

After many hours in the lounge where I ate in the restaurant, had coffee in the coffee area, used the massage chairs, the toilets, watched TV and surfed the web, boarding for the flight was finally called.
The display screen by the boarding gate has not been updated with the new departure time, I doubt it bothers many passengers. Everyone is eager to board. Boarding process was very quick, you could be mistaken you were boarding a flight in Japan.

The jetties are sponsored by Ping An bank which is headquartered in Shenzhen. Once on board there is a small business class, with very colorful and seemingly comfortable seats. The flight is full!!

Seat pitch is nothing to complain about. I fell asleep rather quickly after takeoff, and woke up briefly for the light food service. Here again nothing out of this world.

I am finally woken up by the wheels hitting the runway in a very rainy Xian.

Quite disappointingly, the aircraft does not make its way to the terminal, but rather to a remote parking stand. Thankfully I had rainwear within reach in my carry-on.

One last shot of the aircraft before sheltering from the rain in the airport passenger bus. Even in the rain Xian is a great place to visit for those interested in Chinese history and culture, I highly recommend it.