Review of Capital Airlines flight from Qingdao to London in Economy

CBJ

JD - Capital Airlines

Flight taken on 14 April 2025
JD431
16:00 10h 45m 19:45
Class Economy
Seat 62K
Lia_K
552 · 74 · 3 · 21

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Hello and welcome to another Flight Report!

This is the last FR of my trip to China and will cover the long haul back to London from Qingdao. Qingdao, the 2nd largest city in Shandong province, is a rather… unusual… choice for a long haul to London. I don't understand why there's a flight from Qingdao to London but it's rather convenient for me since most of my relatives are in the city. This flight started way back around 2017 and is operated by Beijing Capital Airlines, another member of HNA Aviation Group. This once-weekly flight is Qingdao's only long-haul to Europe and is one of only two long-hauls from the city, the other being Melbourne. I guess the only reason why this flight is even profitable is that around 40% of the passengers are flying LHR-MEL with a connection through TAO. This connection, if I'm being honest, makes very little sense as all passengers have to pass through immigration and re-check their bags during their transit. It's been made a lot easier with China allowing visa-free transits to more and more nationalities, but the hassle of going through all that (in a smaller city/airport where almost no one speaks English) doesn't seem worth it to me. Flight time probably isn't better than going through Dubai or Singapore either…

Update: As of August 2025, it looks like this flight is now going into London Gatwick (LGW) as opposed to Heathrow (LHR).



I aim to offset all of my CO2 emissions from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard.


Qingdao Jiaodong International Airport (TAO)


Jiaodong Airport is Qingdao's new airport opened during Covid in 2021. It replaced the old Liuting Airport. Like the name suggests, it's located in Jiaodong city and is close to 2 hours by metro to downtown Qingdao. 

Luckily, the airport is served by high-speed trains, which take around 25 minutes from the city. 


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See all the advertising on the train? This is because our train technically has a special livery advertising 年份原浆 - a brand of Baijiu (白酒). Baijiu, translated literally as white liquor, is a Chinese liquor fermented from sorghum. According to Wikipedia, it's the world's best-selling liquor, although that's down to China's huge population. It's largely unheard-of outside China. 



The train station. 


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The main interchange area for high-speed trains and the metro.


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And here's the check-in area. Having flown around in China quite a bit, I'm starting to realize that all (new) airports in China are built identically. They quite literally just copy and paste the same design for every new airport built. They do it for their high-speed rail but I never realized they do the same for airports. Probably saves them a lot of time/money on design. 


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I guess the benefit of this is you won't ever get lost haha. 


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Like on my inbound flight with Tianjin, online check-in isn't available. Check-in itself took around 30 minutes and I was able to grab a window seat, which was very lucky. 

There's a food court above the check-in area. It's pretty large with a lot of options. 


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And here are the departures… all in Chinese. I kinda forgot most people here can't read/speak Chinese when I took this… only realized on the plane and felt like an absolute idiot. 


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Immigration/security/immigration took 10 minutes - China always checks your passport/boarding pass twice, once to stamp your boarding pass and once to stamp your passport. 

Like I said, all new airports in China are built very similarly, with Jiaodong Airport being almost identical in design to Beijing Daxing (PKX). Like PKX, TAO has 5 branches resembling a starfish. Only 1 branch here is for international with the rest for domestic.


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Shandong Airlines Boeing 737-800 heading to Seoul (ICN).


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Cathay Pacific A330-300 heading to Hong Kong (HKG). Most people know this, but Hong Kong and Macao are considered international destinations under the one country, two systems principle. 


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And a Korean Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 pushing back for Seoul (ICN). The most popular international destinations from here are Seoul, Tokyo, and Osaka (weirdly). 


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Even having 1 branch dedicated to international flights is waaaay too much. Most of the terminal is deserted. 

While I was sitting here, I was approached by an Australian who was very confused at the vending machines (did I mention there were no shops here?). It was all in Chinese, and (as usual in China) it didn't accept anything other than WeChat Pay or Alipay. The 2 payment systems are considered essential here with most providers not taking cards (or even cash!). Luckily, I was able to translate/pay for them (they paid me back in cash, which is pretty useless, even for me). It's a pretty firm reminder of why transiting through Qingdao (as a foreigner) is a terrible idea. You're kinda screwed here unless you have someone to translate/pay for you. 


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The flight


Flight time to London will be 11 hours 30 mins (despite the 10 hour 45 min block time) and here's our route:


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Boarding was done by scanning your face, which was a first for me. Facial recognition technology is getting more and more common in China, but this is the first time I've seen it used in an airport. 

I was very lucky to be one of the first to board so here's the (almost empty) economy cabin. 


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IFE (which we'll look at a bit later) and tray table. 


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Legroom isn't great unfortunately, especially for a long haul. 


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First thing I noticed after settling down was the stains on the tray table… not great. 


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First view out of the window.


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On each seat is also a pillow…


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… and a blanket.


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Pushback around 10 minutes early. 


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Taxiing past two Qingdao Airlines A320neo.


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Photo of the terminal with an Airbus A321neo of West Air flying Chongqing (CKG) to Harbin (HRB) via Qingdao and an Okay Airways Boeing 737-800 flying Shenyang (SHE) to Changsha (CSX) via Qingdao. Stopover flights are incredibly common within China. 


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Takeoff!! Bye bye China!! See you in a year! 


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Look at how clear the sky is!! This is incredibly rare in China with all the pollution. In fact, I can honestly say that this is the first time I've had good visibility in over 10 years of flying to/from China. Northern China (notably Beijing) was hit with a pretty strong storm around 2 days ago (it shut down the entire city), so I guess that's the reason behind this amazing visibility. 


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I've never seen China from this high up before. You bet I took a ton of photos haha. 


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But all good things come to an end, so here we are climbing above the clouds. 


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Shortly after takeoff, the crew came around with earphones. 


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Let's have a look at the contents of the seatback pocket, which includes a safety card…


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… and an airsickness bag. No inflight magazine on these smaller Chinese airlines. 


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The sky starting to clear again over Tianjin. 


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Shortly after, the crew came around with dinner. 


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And here it is (we'll look at the box later). There were three options: two beef and one chicken ('western'). I picked the chicken. It was chicken in gravy with spaghetti in tomato sauce… which is a rather weird combination. It's a very Chinese take on Western food I guess haha. It's very good though. 


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And here are the contents in the box. No weird Chinese snacks unlike on my Tianjin flight. It consisted of rice noodles with prawn, a bun, and a carrot cake. In typical Chinese fashion, a sachet of chili sauce is also provided. 


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All in all, a very nice meal. The crew also came around with extra drinks later, which is always welcome.

Over the vast emptiness of Inner Mongolia. 


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After that, I took a quick visit to the toilet and discovered that perfume spray and hand cream is available, which I've never seen before. 


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And now let's have a look at the IFE. 


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The interface is the same as Tianjin Airlines. Similarly, there's a very small number of Chinese Movies and 4 'World Movies'… which consisted of French or Japanese movies from 20 years ago or something. There's also a insignificant number of tv shows. In a similar fashion to Tianjin, there's a large variety of both Chinese and foreign music, in direct contrast to their movie/tv selection. I guess music isn't as heavily restricted as TV/Film in China.






Games are unavailable… 


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… and so is the moving map.


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All in all, a very disappointing IFE system, which is exactly what I expected. Not having the moving map is a shame, though. 

Somewhere around the Mongolian-Russian border. 


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Photo of the cabin around 5 hours into the flight.


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Incredibly, I managed to sleep for 4 hours straight, which made this flight go sooooo much faster. 

Around 2 hours before landing, the crew came around with… Breakfast? Dinner? It's like 2 am in China but I guess time goes out the window on long hauls. 


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And here it is. There were only 2 options this time, beef with mushrooms or chicken with rice. I picked the latter. It's… exactly as described. Once again, a very nice meal (and don't worry, the chilis were for decoration only and weren't spicy). 


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And here are the contents of the box. It included some fresh fruit, a muffin, a Chinese-style yoghurt (rather different from what you'd find in the UK. I can't describe it but it's much nicer, in my opinion), a packet of peanut, and some preserved vegetables (of course). A bun was also handed out separately. 


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Another really, really nice meal. Some people may disagree, but I find catering on these Chinese airlines to be better than most European carriers. Plus, they also give you two hot meals, which is getting rare these days. 

One thing I should mention is that the crew's English is terrible (as usual). It's a bigger problem on Capital than Tianjin as ~40% of the passengers are transiting from Australia. They just memorize a script and some common words, but the second you deviate from that, they just look at you confused. It's not a problem for me as I speak Chinese, but I do wonder what it's like if something irregular happens, like a delay, diversion, or even an emergency. 

The sun is starting to set over Western Europe. 


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Starting our descent into London. 


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Hello UK!


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Over Essex. 


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On final approach. 


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Welcome to the UK! We arrived an hour late thanks to our longer flight time. 


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Parked next to a China Airlines A350 heading to Taipei (TPE). 


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London Heathrow Airport (LHR)


Like Tianjin, Capital Airlines uses Terminal 3 at LHR, which is my least favorite terminal. 


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Walking to immigration…


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… which took 3 minutes thanks to the automatic gates. The manual line did look like a nightmare though (it probably would've taken over an hour to get through that). 

Baggage reclaim area. It took around 15 minutes for my bag to arrive, which is really good. 


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And here we are at the arrivals area. T3 is pretty old/crowded, which is one of the reasons why it's my least favorite terminal. 


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I'll end this FR here. Thanks for following me on this trip to China. This was a last minute trip - I actually planned another trip for April 2025, which will come out sometime soon (whenever I have time haha). Thanks for reading and see you there! ;)

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Product ratings

Airline

Capital Airlines 6.0

  • Cabin6.0 / 10
  • Cabin crew7.0 / 10
  • Entertainment/wifi3.0 / 10
  • Meal/catering8.0 / 10
Departure airport

Qingdao - TAO7.5

  • Efficiency8.5 / 10
  • Access5.5 / 10
  • Services6.0 / 10
  • Cleanliness10.0 / 10
Arrival Airport

London - LHR8.9

  • Efficiency10.0 / 10
  • Access8.0 / 10
  • Services7.5 / 10
  • Cleanliness10.0 / 10

Conclusion

Once again, another uniquely Chinese long-haul flight with Capital Airlines. The cabin is pretty new with slightly below-average legroom. Cabin crew are very friendly if you speak Chinese. If you don't, they're cold and distant just because of the language barrier. IFE is terrible (as expected) with almost no foreign content and a limited number of Chinese shows. Catering is amazing (better than most European carriers) with two hot meals served. No weird Chinese snacks this time, which is a good thing as it means most people can actually enjoy it. All in all, not a bad flight, especially considering the convenience of this route (for me). Highly recommend against flying Capital to go from London to Australia, though. I just don't think it's a good idea to fly a random Chinese airline for 20+ hours (especially as a foreigner), plus connecting in Qingdao isn't great either (it's a small-ish airport serving locals with little thought placed on the experience for foreigners).

Qingdao Jiaodong International Airport (TAO) - A new airport opened only 4 years ago. Very efficient considering the lack of international flights with a good number of food options landside. Absolutely nothing airside so you're kinda screwed if you want food/drinks after security (especially considering the vending machines don't take cash or card... or have English options). Water refilling stations are available, so take an empty bottle!!

London Heathrow Airport (LHR) T3 - My least favorite terminal at LHR but it's still really nice and efficient (although not if you have to use the manual lanes). A pretty standard Heathrow experience.

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Comments (3)

  • Interesting read as I do not know a lot about this specific airline. Food looks decent, though bit weird half comes in a box and the hot food is just dropped on top of that, though no complains if the food is decent right? :)

    Also from what I know, European airlines do serve two hot meals from Europe to Southeast and East Asia from what I remember. Can't think of any airline that doesn't to be honest, though I admit that I chose any Asian carrier over any European if the prices are right :).

    Thanks for the report

    • Hi Thomas,

      Food looks decent, though bit weird half comes in a box and the hot food is just dropped on top of that.

      Yeah, I think a lot of smaller airlines do this (especially in China). I think it's to save the crew from having to clean up the trays. Rather inconvenient though as the box and the meal can't fit next to each other.

      Also from what I know, European airlines do serve two hot meals from Europe to Southeast and East Asia from what I remember.

      Yup, you're right. Haven't flown many European airlines to Asia. I know for sure Lufthansa doesn't anymore (I starved on my last 12-hour flight on them haha), although the two meals usually consist of a dinner and a smaller breakfast. I really hate those breakfasts (with omelets and sausages), so for me it's a huge difference.

      Thanks for reading!

  • waoo to present the food on such a long flight in a box looks very cheap

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