Air China’s Business Class sale – Asia from £1,000 and Sydney / Melbourne from £1,300

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• Lukethetraveller says:

  11 Nov11 November 01:20

  Air China is ok, food terrible, Beijing airport border control is a bad joke (probably half a mile long queue blocked the whole terminal and no one did care), Air China staff at the airport hardly speak any English, transfer lounge very hard to find and honestly not worth it (no staff, empty fridges)…

  • reddot says:

    11 Nov11 November 08:38

    +1. I flew Chengdu-Singapore with Air China on Economy 3 years ago. The food was terrible.

  • Julian says:

    11 Nov11 November 11:03

    I flew with Air China in April. Food in economy was totally totally fine for me. Rice or noodles with fish or meat type thing. Not the quality of food I’d expect in a Conran-ish restaurant, but for airline food I thought it was great. Much better than what I had on BA a couple of years ago. And Beijing airport fine too. The transfer was a bit hairy because it was very very slow and about one person managing it all but if your flight is soon, then they push you to the front. But yeah, I was worried about it all, having read so many bad things about Air China. But for the price that we paid, £325 to HKG with a free stopover in Beijing, we thought it was totally totally amazing and would jump at the chance of flying with them again. But agree with an earlier poster, go to China now. It’s a totally fascinating place.

• Lumma says:

  11 Nov11 November 03:03

  Flew Air China economy to Oz a couple of years ago because it was stupidly cheap (under £400 return paris-oz-london cheap). There was negatives of course, food and IFE were awful, but it wasn’t too bad, worst part was lack of drinks – even soft drinks, on the way back I filled my carry on with water, pop, crisps and sweets and it was much better.

  Had a 13 hour layover in the outbound and they let me use the travel without visa just with showing my onward boarding pass rather than just staying in Beijing airport. Booked an overnighter on the way back too. Think the whole journey in one go would possibly be considered cruel and unusual punishment

• Aceman says:

  11 Nov11 November 03:15

  This is annoying me… I’d love a Qatar sale to get to Asia in February…

  • Marcw says:

    11 Nov11 November 07:31

    Keep dreaming… the times of good Qatar sales are over…

    • Ian says:

      11 Nov11 November 09:54

      Yup, and on my last Qatar flight the food and service were way below the level I’d previously experienced too.

      • Nick says:

        11 Nov11 November 10:31

        Even if there is a QR sale it won’t begin until after the current credit card offers people have expire… they wouldn’t want us to get double discounts now, would they?!

      • marcw says:

        11 Nov11 November 12:10

        The “problem” with Qatar Airways is that they have reached “critical mass” – meaning they don’t need to have constant juicy sales to fill their airplanes.

      • James Croxson says:

        11 Nov11 November 20:41

        I agree , Qatar food in Business class was very poor. Especially when they did not have two main dishes and the business class cabin was half empty. I was not impressed and told them so. Saying all that, for the costs and the real comfort, I will carryon using them.

    • Lady London says:

      11 Nov11 November 21:25

      Well there have been one or two good prices on QR ex-EU this year. The problem is the UK Pound currency has fallen so much, we only get about 10% off the EUR price of the QR sale fare and that’s what we have to pay in Pounds. previously we’d get as much as 33% or so off converting the Euro price to Pounds.. So fares look much higher to us now. Even though QR i is still asking the same price as before, for some fares.

      Hold tight folks we’re still going to suffer more on this till Brexit and a little beyond. And after that the fuel prices may be a lot higher fir airlines..!

      • Rob says:

        11 Nov11 November 21:28

        There was the Manchester to Auckland £1300 fare, albeit that was apparently an error QR told me afterwards!

• rossmacd says:

  11 Nov11 November 05:32

  The Air China A350 business product is very good, and these deals make it even better. I’ve not flown any other CA aircraft, but the A350 is good.

  • Phillip says:

    11 Nov11 November 06:24

    It’s only currently rostered between Beijing and Chengdu at the moment with Milan getting it soon. For the most of it, the sales routes will be on 747, 777 and 330s. So I would book without expecting the A350 and be surprised if it happens. That said, a rare chance to fly the 747-800!!!

• James says:

  11 Nov11 November 05:34

  Bit late with this one Rob 🙁
  Recieved the email today, the 11th.
  Better than recieving it on the 12th I guess 🙂

  • Danny says:

    11 Nov11 November 06:09

    The article was on the website yesterday afternoon; it was a ‘flash’ news/urgent one and Rob doesn’t normally send this by email until the next day. That’s why it is good to check the website throughout the day for these and comments.

    • Tony says:

      11 Nov11 November 07:13

      You can also follow HfP on Twitter and get the notification immediately.

    • Rob says:

      11 Nov11 November 13:33

      I REALLY don’t like doing extra emails during the day – perhaps 2-3 per year at most. Begins to annoy people. It is also quite complex – the current email system is fully automatic and doing an extra one involves setting up the whole thing manually. We only do it for VERY time sensitive British Airways / Avios deals or for anything else which is both hugely generous and limited in numbers.

      What IS happening is that I am dropping in more articles during the day now if the deal is time limited, which gives onsite readers a heads-up over those on the email list. Best way to avoid missing these is to pop in during the afternoon to see if anything new has turned up.

      HEADS UP – there is a good deal tomorrow which is embargoed until the company tell us otherwise. The article is written, it will be dropped 5 minutes after we are allowed to publish but the email list won’t see it until Tuesday.

      • Genghis says:

        11 Nov11 November 13:45

        “Best way to avoid missing these is to pop in during the afternoon to see if anything new has turned up” and generate more online clicks and more revenue for HfP? 🙂

        • Rob says:

          11 Nov11 November 14:00

          More page views = a bigger increase in the ad rates next time we put them up!

          Although quick visits do drag down the ‘average time on site’ score which people also focus on ….

          If we were really bothered we’d just email extracts and not full posts to make people click through. It would add 40% to our page views overnight based on usual email open rate.

    • Bonglim says:

      11 Nov11 November 17:34

      I often think the comments are often a source for hidden gems. That makes people come to the website AND stay here for a while.

      P.s. – from now on i’ll just leave the page open for a bit at work, just to do my bit.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    11 Nov11 November 07:14

    Set up twitter alerts for HFP posts you’ll get them as soon as they hit the website rather than try on emails in the morning

    • Graham Walsh says:

      11 Nov11 November 15:20

      Ssssshhhhhhh. Don’t tell everyone ???????? That’s what I do too.

• Tom says:

  11 Nov11 November 09:02

  The 5.40pm LHR-PEK flight is scheduled to go to an A350 from February, which makes the Heathrow deals much more attractive after that point.

  If you’re targeting the German deals, Frankfurt was gets one to Shanghai from December on the 7pm flight too.

• David says:

  11 Nov11 November 11:53

  Is availability on the Germany to Aus/NZ business class fares super limited? I can find R class availability but the best fare I can find in R class is around Euro 2300 (same fare both within and outside the travel dates for this promotion).

  I flew Air China earlier this year out of CDG. The food is fine as long as you like real (not tourist) Chinese food but there were a few hiccups in cabin service – our family of 4 received 3 different menus for 1 meal!

  • Rob says:

    11 Nov11 November 13:23

    Had no problem finding it for May when I had a play around yesterday, using the 5-day search option.

• Dawn Pearson says:

  11 Nov11 November 12:38

  I’ve put in loads of dates but cheapest is E4500

  • Shoestring says:

    11 Nov11 November 16:21

    You snooze, you lose

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.