I arrived at the gate about 30 to 40 minutes before boarding to make sure I'd be the first one on board. If that wasn't confusing enough, both airlines codeshare on this route, so each flight was operating with both a Qantas and China Eastern flight number. When I departed from it in December, within a 20-minute span, China Eastern and Qantas were both boarding flights to Sydney. For reasons unbeknownst to me, Gate 16 is treated like a revolving door with flights for different airlines boarding every 20 to 30 minutes. I never thought I'd reach the level of #avgeek-ery where I had specific gates at an airport that I liked or disliked, but my last two flights have both departed from Gate 16 in Pudong's Terminal 1, and it is my new living hell. Bookingīusiness-class award space for China Eastern is generally very easy to come by, and we had no problem booking a one-way award for 85,000 Delta SkyMiles (transferred 1:1 from American Express Membership Rewards) and $289 in taxes, which we paid for with the Platinum Card® from American Express. My experience made two things abundantly clear: The airline has made a serious effort to improve its onboard product (and there was no smoking on this flight!), but it has a long way to go if it ever hopes to compete with five-star Asian airlines like EVA Air or ANA.

A number of factors combined to create this reputation, including inedible food, apathetic and indifferent service, and the more-than-occasional bout of pilots and crew smoking on board.Įxactly seven months to the day after moving to Shanghai, I got the chance to fly China Eastern's business class on one of its longest and most prominent routes to New York-JFK. It wasn't that long ago that China Eastern was on the short list of major airlines to avoid at all possible costs.

Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available.

Air china 777 300er economy