I'm very excited to share my very first FR with you all. A domestic flight from Guangzhou to Fuzhou during the start of the spring festival aka the largest human mass migration.
Arrival at Baiyun Airport
I left Tian He (Guangzhou CBD) at 9:20 AM and arrived 45 kilometers away at Baiyun Airport Terminal 2 at 10:15 AM. It was a smooth ride that took less time than anticipated. Guangzhou traffic can be a little unpredictable these days.
After quickly exiting my Didi (local Uber) went straight to the domestic entrance of the terminal. There are two sides in the terminal - one for domestic and one for international. You can enter by both but because this is an domestic flight, it made more sense to enter on the domestic side which is closer to the check-in counters and the departure gates.
After a quick and basic explosive check, i went to the check-in terminal to print my boarding pass as I am one of the person who actually enjoys holding a physical boarding pass. After going through security, I went straight to the boarding gate 267 and waited for the last call to board.
Boarding
After waiting until everyone boarded and the curious yet insisting gaze from the gate agents, i relented and gave them my boarding pass. I crossed the jet bridge an after a few meters and arrived at the plane door, there were still a few people waiting to enter the plane (Boeing 737-800). A smiling FA welcomed me and pointed the way rightward into the cabin (albeit there was just one way i could go) I was still pleasantly surprised that she was smiling (a majority of the time, for service in China, smile is optional). Upon getting into the plane, I quickly glaned into the deep cabin. I thought that row 45 would be in the back of the plane but it was actually only 4 rows after business class. The overhead bins were closed (meaning they were full?) but I still took my chances and opened the one on top on my seat and … behold…. there was enough space for my small backpack!
I sat down, buckled up and there were actually other people coming into the plane as I was not the last.
The seat pitch is not the biggest… Not sure how much it is but I do fit without any issues without bumping my knees with the seat in front. There is no IFE available on the flight nor was there any monitor on top to show any entertainment or movies or anything. It was really bare. There are QR codes that you can scan and probably would take you to some online platform where you can get some movies and games but my Chinese is not nearly good enough to be able to take advantage of such (or i am just speculating that they might have some).
The Intercom information announcement were made in both Mandarin and English. I was actually surprised that the Flight crew came and distributed some lunch boxes before the flight even took off.
I wonder if I might have missed the security announcement as the FA were saying things in the intercom but nobody in the plane seemed to be listening.
We left the gate at 11:05 exactly and taxied towards the runway and we took off at 11:35.
The flight and amenities
The flight was quite uneventful save for some light turbulences 20 minutes in right after the seatbelt sign had been turned off.
On my way to the back of the plane to go to the bathroom, I noticed that it was a full flight.
About half way to destination, the captain made some announcements about destination arrival time and temperature and some new government programs available on the WeChat APP both in Mandarin and English.
FA only came in the cabin twice during the flight. Once to collect the garbage from the meal box and once upon the descent to check on seatbelts and down trays.
There were only two bathrooms, located at the back of the plane.
It was clean albeit small. There was a bottle of hand lotion which is a thoughtful gesture considering that air in the plane can be really dry in the cabin.
Bathrooms were made unavailable about 20 minutes prior to landing.
Landing and arrival
After about one hour and 35 minutes we landed at Fuzhou Changle Airport. Quite a new terminal and easy to find the Didi pickup area. However it is not connected to the metro station.
Thanks for reading my first FR! Looking forward to your comments!
Nice report! The row numbers seem odd considering you were in row 45 near the front. I've never flown on Chinese Airlines before, is this a standard thing in China?
I'm assuming that's the case so passenger can retain their seats in case if their flight is swapped from a 787 to a narrowbody (or vice versa).
Nice first report with good informative descriptions! It's always interesting to see domestic flights in China as they're similar and yet different to domestic flights in the US. The basic service and cabins is pretty similar to US domestic flights, but a free meal on such a short flight is definitely very different. Also kind of a shame there's no kind of IFE. It's fine on a short flight like this, but some Chinese domestic flights can be long and it would be boring not to have any form of entertainment if on a narrowbody. I know a few Chinese carriers are beginning to roll out streaming IFE to personal devices, but it seems like it's not really caught on yet. Hopefully it becomes more common in the near future.
Thanks for sharing your first report here with us and welcome to Flight-Report!