This is an open question to anyone who has flown to and from airports in China. I'm visiting Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing this spring. I'm flying Cathy Pacific, Dragonair and Air China (on an A340, A330 and B777 respectively). Does anyone have any thoughts or experiences of flying any of these airlines into the above cities? What are the airports like? I've traveled extensivly but never to the far-east.

I have flown on Dragon Air from Hong Kong to Beijing onboard their A330-300. The aircraft are very nice and their service is fine. The aircraft are well maintained and the flight attendants are well trained, etc. The only thing Dragon Air's aircraft don't have are PTV or a cabin TV which doesn't really matter as the longest flights they fly are 3 and a half hours.

Beijing Airport has two parallel runways and they have a huge variety of airlines from all around the world. If you can go around the perimeter of the airport and it is not too cold unlike when I visited earlier this month then you should be able to take nice aircraft photos.

Hong Kong Airport also has two parallel runways and gets a huge variety of airlines from all around the world. It is hard to take descent photos from the perimeter of the airport when 07L/07R. I took some shots of aircraft taxing on the apron.

Both Cathay Pacific and Dragon Air should be great airlines. No comment on Air China.

Enjoy your trip,

Steven.

I've flown extensively in and around China, but its been a couple of years since I've been up that way.

Dragonair is a pleasure to fly, and being associated with CX, seemless baggage connection etc is great. I have had a lot of bad experiences with Air China, particularly being delayed departures. One time flying from Guangzhou to Beijing we departed 20 hours after we were supposed to! Personally, I'd rather fly exclusively Dragonair, but Air China offer you the sorts of experiences where you might get really peeved at the time, but you look back later on and smile - the sort of experiences that make air travel interesting!

When I was last in China, both Beijing and Shanghai had awful, run down terminals. I mean really awful! However, a new one was being constructed in BJ at the time and this should be open now. A new one was also opened recently in Shanghai (in the Pudong new industrial zone) but I'm not sure if this replaces the old one or just provides additional capacity for domestic flights.

Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok airport is superb, but certainly doesn't have the magic of Kai Tak. Kind of sad really!

Just one wrd of warning - don't accept rides from supposed taxi drivers who will approach you in the arrivals hall. More often or not they're unlicensed and you can never be sure you'll get to where you want to go. There are taxi ranks clearly visible in front of the terminals in both Beijing and Shanghai.

Hope you have a great trip.

Andrew

I have flown CA, CX and KA. CX and KA have great service and start-of-the-art aircraft. CA is less remarkable than the other two, but offers good service.

I haven't used the new HK airport. By the time you get to China. you should be using the new Pudong international airport (PVG). It's a huge airport built in the middle of nowhere. The taxi ride to the city is long.