I rarely ever write about the flights I take. However, this was probably one of the emptiest flights I have ever taken. I am heading to Chengdu Polytechnic for a few days and had a book flights straight to Chengdu, there was not that many options and most of them either went via Beijing or Shanghai, adding several extra hours with slow transfer times at Chinese airports. I managed to find a direct flight from Frankfurt to Chengdu, which even with having to fly from London to Munich and then Munich to Frankfurt was over 4 hours quicker than the other Star Alliance options. The downside was the intercontinental flight was with Air China. I have only ever taken Air China between Europe and China as a last resort and can count the times which I have. The first being when I got to the airport in Beijing and Lufthansa were on strike, so they put me on a direct Air China flight to London, the second time when my Air China flight from Changzhou to Beijing was cancelled so I missed my Swiss flight, so I was put on an Air China flight. The third time was when I had to get a one-way flight to Beijing to pack up before moving back to Europe, so wanted to get an award mile flight to avoid getting a costly one-way fare. The final time was a last minute flight at the end of Golden Week, and was the only flight available. So I did not have high hopes for a good flight to Chengdu, however, we boarded from a bus gate and only used only one bus to get to all the passengers to the plane. This was the first indication of how empty the flight would be, using only one bus to board passengers for an A320-300. Once on board it was pretty clear the flight was not more than 15-20% full. So it was easy to have a whole row to lie down on. Which was good given the cramped leg room and the stupid foot rests that Air China have, which are only good if you are around 5 foot. If taller than this takes up your leg room and bruises your knees. The plane was only not in a great state with most of the seat back screens not working (I had several rows to test) and the seat pockets destroyed or hanging off. I think I got very lucky with this flight. The ample space made up for the inability to listen to music on my phone, work out when I could go to the bathroom as the seatbelt light was on the whole time, not use any electronics for the final hour of the flight and eat two meals which were identical. The normal quirks of flying with Chinese airlines. When I got off the plane I also realised the plane blanket had got fluff all over me 🙂
Robin Bell 