Avis du vol entre Beijing et Haikou en classe Affaires avec Hainan Airlines

Hi everyone, welcome back to another flight review. As promised, today we have China’s first ever A330-900 Neo, on its first ever passenger flight from Beijing to Haikou on board Hainan Airlines. I write to you from the air, as I wanted to describe every detail and feeling of this experience. The meal service just finished literally two minutes ago, and I’ll wrap up the review once we land with the final touches. So far, many mixed feelings about this experience, but primarily positive ones from the airline. Let’s go!

Hainan’s Neo been a huge talking point for a while now, and excitement has been brewing across the mainland aviation community. I was lucky enough to be in Beijing visiting my family when realizing its inaugural journey left from here and grabbed one of two remaining business class tickets. Haven never been on any inaugural flight of any sort, to say I was looking forward to this would be an understatement. I went to bed around 10:30 last night, ready for an early wake up since it takes an hour to arrive to the airport ahead of our early 8:00 am departure. I promise I’m not lying when I say I saw airlines in my dreams last night.

T2 at PEK isn’t anything unfamiliar, since MU primarily flies out from here too. Although around 5:45 am, the terminal was very busy. Hainan has a dedicated business class and status holder check-in, easily identifiable by its gold colors

After a quick security check, I was on my way to the lounge. Hainan operates two lounges at PEK, adjacent to one another. I believe one was for high status holders, and the other for business class passengers, with the latter being slightly further down the aisle and mine for today. The lounge was serving breakfast, with a decent buffet selection and a noodle bar.

. Similar to my Junyao review from last week, Hainan also displays merch for purchase in their lounge, which is always a nice touch. 

The lounge was serving breakfast, with a decent buffet selection and a noodle bar. 

I grabbed the beef noodles and some buffet items. I've always been a huge fan of the salted duck egg, stemming back to my childhood, something I will never pass up on! The noodles were rather bland, but I was told anything else from the noodle bar would take around 10 minutes.

I also passed by some gaming consoles and computers for pass time, the only lounge I’ve ever seen in mainland providing these games. 

The restroom in the lounge was also spotless, as all domestic carriers are in terms of lounges. There was also a quieter rest area, with a traditional Chinese tea ceremony setup, unsure if staff members would operate this upon request, or if passengers were free to use it.

However, the main problem with the experience first showed itself here, and it was nothing to do with the airline or its staff. There were two young men, in their twenties, being extremely loud when chatting. The lounge was a decent size and nearly full, but all you could hear was them talking (or more like yelling). I only stayed for around 20 minutes before I really couldn’t take any more of their noise, and quite a few Western guests also shared similar feelings.

I took some time to walk around the terminal and couldn’t wait to check out my bird. After taking an escalator downstairs, I realized we had a remote gate today, which it awesome news for snapping shots.  

I was really looking forward to some sort of ceremony, similar to those offered on inaugural routes abroad with some festivities, speeches and food. I thought for a second I might've been at the wrong gate, since it was absolutely no different to any ordinary flight. I guess, nothing special was planned on the ground. Later we will see, the same was sadly said for the flight. To be fair I guess this isn't really an inaugural flight (in terms of routing), but I still wished something would be in place to commemorate this landmark moment for Chinese aviation. After the flight, quite a few flight enthusiasts also shared similar feelings of being letdown, oh well. 

Boarding was scheduled for 7:20, but began around 7:00. Hainan offers a private bus with padded seats for business passengers. Unfortunately, this meant cramming all 24 business passengers, including the noisy ones from the lounge, into the bus. 

The ride lasted around 10 minutes, and never did their noise levels ever decay. Even worse, someone in a red shirt joined in to yell with the two from the lounge and ended up sitting next to me on the bus. As I sat at the window seat, he constantly reached over me to take pictures, which I wouldn’t have minded if he ever asked first or offered even the slightest bit of politeness. I swear, I was really on the edge. Look, I get that you’re excited, so is everyone else, but there’s a line. 

Alas, the bus parked and I came face to face with our A330-900 Neo. Combined with the rising morning sun, oh how beautiful is this. It was quite a spectacle to see everyone taking pictures of the plane, great to see the love for aviation is contagious.

Climbing aboard, I immediately got a snap of the economy class cabin, which looked awesome with the new design and "winged" seats.

. Turning back left, I got my first look at the business class, in a 1-2-1 configuration. 

Unfortunately, no window seat for me today, so I headed over to 12D. 

To say the cabin was in a party mood would be putting it lightly, out came all the cameras and the lads from earlier snapping pictures from all angles. The two lads from the lounge asked me very kindly If they could borrow my seat space to take pictures, which I had no problem with. I guess the two of them are very polite, just overly excited (who can blame them?).

Sadly, the same can’t be said of the red shirt guy sitting next to me in the bus. He continuously interrupted the crew when they were speaking to other passengers, spoke to the crew in an extremely distasteful manner, and ultimately just seemed like someone lacking manners. Good thing he didn’t sit near me.

Interestingly, the business cabin featured essentially two audience demographics. The first were younger guys in their twenties, those very excited aviation enthusiasts, and the other slightly older passengers just wanting peace and quiet, the latter completely oblivious to the inaugural flight as they inquired the crew over why everyone was so excited. Quite an interesting combination, I felt I was the only one in between the two groups, younger but wanting quiet.

Nearly all of the younger lads handed over their flight logs to crew, but quite a few were turned down by the crew. How do you guys feel about this? I’ve heard some mainland carriers have begun refusing for pilots to write in these, but I’m not sure how it works. I do have to applaud some of them for their dedication to the cause, as nearly all of them took the trip from their hometown over to Beijing just for this flight and planned on flying right back to Beijing after landing. Considering this flight is nearly 4 hours one way, that must be around 10 hours of travelling in one day.  

Alright, back to the seat now. Here’s the first look at our brand-new business seat, still having the 330-900 Neo sheets on the headrest from its demo tour. I guess this isn’t exactly a first flight, since many were done as demo ones, but is the first one with a full passenger load. A blanket, pillow, slippers, bottle of water, and menus were waiting. I was slightly sad to see no little gifts or souvenirs commemorating the inaugural flight were provided, something I was quite looking forward to . No worries though! 

! The IFE screen is massive, with lots of selections. I ended up watching a Chinese TV show, but lots of English options were available. Water and headphones were hiding inside this storage space, a very large one at that. 

New plane also means new charging ports, love to see a type-C one being built in.

A small reading light is located behind the seat, but I did find it to be quite dim. 

The overhead bins were also bigger than usual and seemed quite different being brand new without all those marks from suitcases and bags. 

Looking forward, the entire first row of business class has far more leg space than the rest of the cabin, I wonder if Hainan will advertise that for higher prices, by far the most I’ve seen on a business seat (AF’s new Business cabins might rival this, but also only their first row). 

). The food menu card featured three choices for each ten days of the month. Three choices between the 1st and 10th, then 10th to 20th, then 20th to 30th, for each meal. Unfortunately, only a Chinese menu was available, while English was offered for the drink list.  

The three breakfast options were listed on the right side of the second image. We had a choice of pork/fungus noobld soup with egg, western cheese omelette with a chichken sausage, baked beans, brocolli, tomato, and bread, or porridge with fried dough stick, stir fried chicken and a fried egg, I went with the latter. 

Here is the extensive drink list, I've included only the English version.

The crew then came by with wet towels, nuts, and welcome drinks. This is my first time aboard Hainan (other than a short 1-hour flight with essentially no service) since pre-Covid times when I used to take them between Beijing and Boston, and something I really missed is the coconut water and milk. I had to take the coconut water for the welcome drink, which also came with some nuts.

Speaking of crew, probably one of the best I’ve experienced on any flight. HU really whipped out their all-star team for this inaugural flight, and it shows. The lady in the front row must be a high-status holder with HU, as each of the business crew came by to chat with her and introduce themselves (as much as they could, as the guy sitting next to me on the bus kept interrupting them). Breakfast orders were then taken, and I went with the HU specialty coconut water iced americano and a coconut milk for my beverages. The captain then came onto the PA and welcomed us aboard and thanked us for our enthusiasm ahead of the Neo’s first ever trip. The crew then dimmed the lights to show off the Neo’s new lighting system, pretty cool! 

Soon, we began taxing out of our gate, and took off at 8:08 am, 8 minutes behind schedule. Around 10 minutes after, the seatbelt sign came off, and the crew sprang into action. The four or five young lads also disappeared as soon as they could walk around and didn’t come back for a while, I’m assuming to check out the rest of the cabin. I did ask the purser about WIFI, to which she apologized for not having any, but did say they’re actively working with the seat manufacturer in hopes of installing internet in the near future. They probably will need to sort this out if they plan on taking the Neo on long haul routes.

Service began again with another cold towel, and I was provided a coconut water, not what I ordered. When I asked, the crew were extremely apologetic (which was completely unnecessary since I was quite unclear when I ordered the coconut milk and not the coconut water, which sound quite similar in Chinese) and said it was her fault she should have clarified which I wanted, I kept reassuring her there really was no need to apologize. Again, all-star crew in the house. She quickly came back with my original order and again apologized; oh I really felt bad she was being far too kind!  

When the meal service arrived, to be honest I was a bit disappointed. I felt that for an inaugural flight, they really could have added some extra elements, and honestly the food might have been on par or even worse with the lounge offerings. The dough stick was quite cold, chicken and mushrooms genuinely not as great as the lounge version, and white congee was nothing special. 

However, the dessert was the highlight of the meal. This featured taro balls, sweet dessert rice, some dried fruit in coconut milk, a Hainan traditional sweet. Alongside fresh fruit, this was quite the finish. 

After lunch, I checked out the headphones, which worked well but my ears became to hurt after a while. 

The restroom was as clean as when I first boarded, clearly the crew have been doing great work throughout the journey.  

The staff were also extremely quick to act in response to the crew-bell being rung. My chopsticks fell during breakfast and someone came over within seconds after I clicked the bell. I’m also a big fan of the small blanket, the color and feel resembles that of Qatar’s business offering. 

Here are some of the offerings aboard the IFE, a decent mix of English and Chinese films.

Of course, the seat can be fully reclined, and this modern touch screen controller is a nice addition. 

Something I noticed throughout the flight is that the business class toilets always had a line. I guess two toilets for 24 passengers can create some traffic, especially considering all the drinks the crew have been feeding us. It was a first for me when I tried to stand up and visit a vacant toilet, only for the crew to inform me there was a line and I needed to wait until the guest in 18A used it first. They then said the same to another guest, and when she finally got her turn, she was escorted over by a crew member, found that quite interesting. I guess it’s not really a huge issue, but I can see this becoming a potential problem with longer flights. 

I later noticed lots of people gathering in the front galley, and saw some pictures being taken on my way to the toilet. Turns out everyone wanted a snap of the plane model number, wearing the proud golden People's Republic of China name!

Enter text here…

I also realized a small spread of desserts and snacks were out in the galley. The crew proudly boasted freshly made coffee, I'm assuming from one of these devices. I wasn't certain if these would be offered through the cabin or was simply a self service, turned out to be the latter. I assumed some other guests also thought the crew would push this cart through the cabin, as a celebratory gift, but not to be.

I spent the remaining two hours or so watching a Chinese romantic comedy show, and I overheard my seat neighbour being quite pleased that all the younger passegers in the cabin seemed to quiet down. The crew came onto the PA with around 40 minutes until landing, not for the usual descending announcement but rather to wish the passenger in 11K a happy birthday. I think this was my first time experiencing a PA Birthday announcement for a passenger. After chatting a bit with him, I realized he was a high Hainan status holder, which might explain the announcement and a birthday card the crew handed to him during boarding, nice touch!

Finally, we landed into Haikou Meilan international airport, my first time here in Hainan. Just when I thought I escpaed the schenanigans of that red shirt fella, he proceeded to rip off three or four of those headrest sheets commemorating the Neo's demo tour. Never was he given permission by the crew, nor by the passengers who occupied the seats that he torn them off of. Since he sat in the seat before mine, when he turned to me and considered taking mine, I stared him down which seemed to do the trick. I do feel that the crew had no problem with us keeping this as a souvenir, but it was moreso the aggressive nature of his actions. 

Onto a final positive, I love how Haikou's airport, like that of Hawaii's, is open so you can really take in the fresh air upon landing. Goodbye for now, Mr. Inaugural!