Well, we are on our way! We left home at 0930 for the Ottawa airport. Once there we managed to check in as far as Beijing, it was too early to check in for the Beijing -Sydney leg. Luckily we were able to check our bags right the way through to Australia. We had a quick flight to Montreal, where we had a three hour layover in the lounge.
I wasn’t too sure what to expect from Air China; many reports pegged it as the worst airline in the world, others sang its praises. The flight was 2o minutes late arriving so I figured we’d be at least 20 minutes late in departing as they only had just over two hours to get all the passengers off, clean, refuel, cater and load a new set op passengers. In reality they did all this AND we departed 5 minutes early. They earned a few extra bonus points by getting us our Beijing – Sydney boarding passes as well. Once on board the aircraft, the service was excellent with many little extras not seen on N. American airlines.
The food was pretty good, if a little limited in choice, although to be fair they were offering both Western and Chines meal options. What was impressive was the fact that there was no plastic anywhere in the service, even the milk for coffee came in a small china jug!
Contrary to rumour there was also a reasonable selection of Western Movies on the in-flight entertainment, which is good news as I left the SD card with the movies I had loaded back at home! At least I have 3 seasons off Big Bang Theory on the computer!!
Currently the meal service is finished, 1 movie and 1 BBT have been watched and the moving map still says 10 hours and 11 minutes left until we land! Even after landing we have 7 hours in Beijing and then something like an 11 hour flight to Sydney.
We are now somewhere over Russia and North of Japan with just over 2 hours to go. I managed to get about 6 hours sleep which is a little odd as I went to sleep at 2030 and woke up at 1430!
After 13 hours 23 minutes in the air we landed in a smoggy Beijing. Even though we were just transferring to another international flight we had to go through security again, it was far more thorough than Ottawa.
We met up with a fellow Canadian who had been having a hard time at Montreal over his Australian ETA. An ETA is an Electronic Travel Authority (Visa) issued by the Australian Government. The problem with this particular system is that if you don’t know how, it is not possible to physically check the visa for accuracy. In the case of this person, he was being denied boarding due to having no visa. Luckily he had the details of his travel agent handy and was able to contact them. The issue was that his birth date on the ETA was one day out from his passport birth date. From the downside to the upside of the electronic visa, the change was made and in the system within minutes. He made the flight with 2 minutes to spare!
According to many reviews I had read the lounge would be vastly overcrowded with no seats or working electric plugs; under no circumstance should anyone risk using the showers as they were indescribably disgusting. Well we found seats, we found working plugs so I ventured off to the showers. The only bad comment I could make was the lack of temperature control of the water when someone else turned the tap on. Even the marble floors in the showers were heated! Moral of the story…. Don’t believe all the reviews that you read.
Down to a four hour wait now til we head out and board the next flight.