Guangzhou to Tokyo Narita is one of the shorter routes on which China Southern offers three class service. This particular flight was operated by one of their Airbus A330-200 aircraft, which is pretty cool since it has just one row of first class. The cabin is in a 1-2-1 configuration, with fully flat seats.
Continue reading: Review: China Southern A330 First Class Guangzhou to Tokyo Narita
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
No review of the Hilton Tokyo Narita coming? I have stayed there but prefer the ANA Crowne Plaza Narita Airport Hotel right next door a lot more!
I still do not understand how on such a short flight they could have thought that an extra hour had gone by!
@ Paul Griffin -- Since I reviewed it extensively a few months ago I figured there was no point in reviewing it again. Maybe again in a year or so!
Uh oh. I can literally hear you walking on eggshells as you composed this review. Hopefully you find your voice again when you go on to review other airlines. As long as they don't demote the timekeeper too 🙂
@DBest - He did say the main course smelled like warm dog food. That doesn't sound like eggshells to me!
Demote the clocks!
I agree with @DBest. I feel the review was honest but muted because of the situation.
When you sent the rice away, why didn't you ask for chicken? The fruit plate did look good.
IS there any sort of wine list at all? On their website they write about their nice wine selection.
I agree with @Dave - it didn't feel like Lucky was walking on eggshells at all, given some of the (as ever) amusing comments! Another great review - thanks Lucky 🙂
The seat appears to be the same as AF la premiere, except for the screen placement and monitor on the front of the companion seat
Lucky mentioned a "communication barrier"; his lack of elaboration here is our only evidence of his "walking on eggshells."
Given the indicated travel date of Feb 10, I'd bet Lucky completed this entire review several days ago and simply scheduled its publication for today, whereas the employee demotion news itself broke only yesterday.
We readers should beware confirmation bias.
Totally going to remove China Southern from list of Airlines to fly. That's the most pathetic main course i'll ever seen in First Class. Disgusting.
Do you have any plans to give Air China F a try? I've found the F class food on CA to be more like decent J food, but it has never tasted anywhere close to dog food.
@ MEOW -- After my China Southern experience can't decide if I'm more or less inclined to try Air China first class. Maybe more inclined? Guess I should give them a try...
I'm I having serious deja vu, or did you just write almost the exact same thing about a flight similar? Or was it the same flight?
@ Eric M -- Nope, you have good memory. Shared my initial thoughts on the flight in this post:
https://onemileatatime.com/flying-china-southern-a330-first-class/
This was just the more detailed post about the flight.
Okay. I was about to check the lottery. LOL. It was the prepare for landing that got me.
She's probably cleaning toilets back at china southern hq because she read the time wrong. Perhaps you could have left that part out, I'm guessing it's an extremely rare occurrence and likely not going to happen on any of your reader's flights.
Wow, serving a dog food-like meal for premium passenger is beyond my imagination ben, but it's good that you have reported it truthfully even though you'll probably send the F maitre d'cabin to educational camps...
@Lucky
Don't bother with CA First. I recently flew on CA First from Sydney to Beijing. Although seating and hardware is top notch. But service and catering is much much much less desired. Catering is exactly same as Business only with a First presentation. Amenity kit is same as Business - Small White L'Occitane pack. No PJ's provided on my particular flight. Although like yourself I'm the only person in First but during the flight at least 6 seats was taken by crew as resting seats. I believe this the norm of Chinese airlines to allow crew rest in empty premium classes. I've noticed on several flights with CA CZ MU feels there's separate cabin dedicated for the crew to sleep. So Lucky, don't waste your points on Chinese airlines, their not worth it.
As odd as this flight was... it was a 4 hour flight. I think I would take that flight over almost anything you can get in the US on a 4 hour trip (depending on how much they charge of course... I cannot seem to find a round trip fare for CZ on this route...). The food on US domestic flights can be pretty hit or miss, with inconsistent service. Yes, the AA transcontinental service is better, but I would much prefer this flight for say a PHX to YYZ trip!
Yeah, well, AA is on the same slippery slope regarding crew taking F seats. Happened to my friend on JFK-GRU, an overnight flight delayed 3 hrs primarily due to weather, an attendant in an adjacent seat kept reading lights and TV screens going, really messed up her sleep. Another attendant gave her attitude whenever asking for beverages and when asking for turndown service. Wonder if the Aunt Peggy dragon attitude from US (flyertalk trip report reference) is already leaking into AA service, or if that's just another crappy Latin America route crew.
@lucky, since AA sells those F seats around 7K roundtrip, what's fair comp? She complained and was given 15K miles. Sorry for the OT.
@ Jig -- Ouch, that sounds pretty rough. Was your friend on a revenue ticket, award ticket, or upgrade? If an award ticket then I would say 15K miles is pretty fair compensation.
@ Dylan -- Totally agree, no doubt on the whole the experience is better than most flights in the US (thanks primarily to the hard product). For what it's worth, first class on this route retails for $3,500 roundtrip.
Keep in mind, though, that a fairer comparison would be to the service that Cathay Pacific and Singapore offer on their 3-4 hour hops within Asia. Admittedly those airlines are in a completely different league, though.
@ Kevin -- Who knows, after the China Southern experience maybe they need me to sample their product? 😉
Horrible service on all accounts and I'm not shocked by it. It was certainly obvious your previous flight with this airline wasn't a fluke.
BTW, the description under the fruit plate is wrong.
Ben,
She had a paid I fare of a bit less than $6K, then upgrade using her husband's SWU. Make any difference to your expectation of 15K miles since it was not an award ticket?
Oops, need to correct the caption under the fruit pic.
Nice pics and story, as usual!
@ Peter - You beat me to it. It still is tri-color too (red, white and yellow)...
@ Jig -- To be honest the issue is that in practice American isn't huge about providing compensation for service failures. So while I do think something more would be fair, in practice I think that's about as high as they'll go.
@Lucky, good point... Asia really does medium haul business and first class so much better than the US or Europe in terms of hard product (and soft product as well on OZ, SQ, CX, etc.).
You should have asked for the chicken if you weren't happy with the rice.
I thought it absurd that the cabin crew could get the flight timing wrong. Beyond unprofessional.
Lucky: You gave CA 777-3 J a very good review just a couple months ago. It's a much better than experience than CZ.
https://onemileatatime.com/review-air-china-business-class-paris-to-beijing/
Great report Lucky!
I'm impressed the FA apologized about getting the time wrong. I can't imagine a UA FA ever admitting to such a mistake.
You mention CX/SQ setting the standard for 3-4 hour Asia flights. I had a very poor crew on CX HKG-NRT this week. No service for the first hour, then the crew just disappeared after the lunch service. And most of CX aircraft on those routes have the regional J seat, which is not very comfortable (although this was the upgraded 330 with the Cirrus reverse herringbone seat).
Ben, the rice becomes tri color, once you mix the 3 color ingredients into the white rice !!!!
I always love your trip reports. In fact, I wrote my first one 3 days ago, about a business class flight on AA's new triple 7. Check my new blog!
I don't get why the Chinese airlines do the descent announcements so early - CZ is 30 minutes and China Eastern I think is 35 minutes. It is unusual.
The time zone change between China and Japan is one hour. Easy mistake to make.
Okay, so now we understand where the missing hour came from, can anyone explain what the heck that tri-color rice dish was supposed to be???
@lucky any chance you'll take an Aeroflot flight soon and review it? There are very few Aeroflot reviews out there