Horrible Flight (China Eastern Air)

Member Name: Paulo1

Product:	China Eastern Air
Date:	08/01/06 (2509 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Too many to list

I WILL NEVER FLY WITH THIS AIRLINE AGAIN.

I recently visited Sydney and travelled by China Eastern Airlines via Shanghai from London Heathrow. The trip out to Sydney was not too bad however Shanghai airport was complete chaos, no advice or direction is given to people passing through the airport, however this is not China Easterns fault. The plane and food though were pretty grim.

The return trip was terrible. Leg room is poor and the plane very dated, the food is awful, unless you like either pork and rice or pork and noodles then take a picnic.

One of the toilets was coming away from the wall and looked ready to fall off at any moment.

In flight entertainment is awful. We were shown Monsters Inc, Nemo and Batman and Robin all very old films and the last one is definitely in the top ten of worst films ever, this was compounded by the fact that the sound was not working properly and also the inability of the staff to operate the system with films being cut out half way through and then restarted and also the start of the films being shown two or three times until it was pointed out.

Unless you speak chinese then you will be treated very differently to the Chinese speaking passengers.

The stop over in Shanghai is horrendous, you are shepherded to the hotel in this case the Jin Li Hua which was dirty, moldy and freezing cold, it is in an area which was certainly not the posh end of Shanghai. The following morning a fight broke out between the porters, bus driver and people who had shepherded us to the hotel, it was broken up but became very heated. There was no storage on the buses and so cases were piled high in the front seats and the aisles then filled up with cases meaning nobody could get off the bus and then the driver refused to help take the cases from the bus.

The flight was overbooked and a number of people had to take the alternative flight to Paris then Heathrow which left 12 hours later. Again Shanghai airport did not fail to disappoint. Boarding was delayed by one hour however no information was available. A further 90 minutes was spent sitting on the runway before we took off.

Truly the worst airline experience I have had. Furthermore not isolated as my in-laws used the airline to fly to Sydney the week before me and experienced exactly the same problems, with one of them being told that he was not booked on a flight despite having the tickets, he got on the flight but was told during the 12 hour flight from Shanghai to London that they had no food for him and so he did not have anything to eat, however having tasted the pork and rice/noodles he was maybe the lucky one!!

Summary: Basic, Dated, Dirty, Unfriendly, Unreliable Airline