oneworld rumoured to be courting China Southern

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• Graeme says:

  26 Nov26 November 03:05

  No BA I’m not flying LHR to BKK via CAN…

• John T says:

  26 Nov26 November 07:34

  China Southern is a nasty airline and no one in their right mind would ever choose to fly it over Cathay.

• Joe says:

  26 Nov26 November 07:40

  Having endured a few China Southern long haul and short haul flights I can assure you their joining One World is not something to get remotely excited about. Without question the worst airline food I have ever experienced – seriously pick the vegetarian option as the generic ‘meat’ would not be considered suitable as pet food here. Think knuckles, gristle and blood vessels.

  Guangzhou airport, while huge, is the pits. It reeks of cigarette smoke, coughs and damp and there is absolutely nothing to do apart from walk along a very long corridor while you curse yourself for choosing a sub-standard airline because it was marginally cheaper than an airline that knows what it’s doing.

  Essentially, it’s a very poor all round experience. I can’t see why anyone would choose to fly China Southern via CAN when you can fly Cathay via Hong Kong and have a much better experience.

  IMHO.

• CamFlyer says:

  26 Nov26 November 07:52

  In contrast, we had a very positive experience flying China Southern PEK-CAN-MEL-SZX-PEK in J pre-COVID. The hard product was good enough. We thought the food was good, though very Chinese and not for the faint hearted (in comparison to BA LHR-PEK, which was quite mediocre). Service was also very Chinese, with limited English competency, but well intentioned. On that basis it wouldn’t be my first choice, but if the schedule and price worked (as it did for us) I wouldn’t shy away. I’m not sure about the experience in Y, however.

• mark2 says:

  26 Nov26 November 09:31

  10+ years ago my niece flew to Australia on China Southern.
  She spent her time there dreading the flight home!

  • lumma says:

    26 Nov26 November 11:34

    I did Air China once for £300 return. I learned for the return flights to make sure that I had plenty of snacks and drinks in my hand luggage as they were extremely tight when it came to giving anything at all out. Thimbles of Pepsi, red wine, etc.

    IFE was terrible too, like half a dozen old films in English and any TV shows were one episode only.

  • flyforfun says:

    27 Nov27 November 00:28

    I had people at work do that too, they bought one way tickets with another airline they were so traumatised!! That was only 5 years ago.

• CW says:

  26 Nov26 November 09:38

  They do have a vast domestic network, just a shame that their base is too close to HK where Cathay is. Would have been better to see a Beijing or Shanghai based airline (Air China or China Eastern respectively) joining but they are firmly in their respective alliances.

• Save East Coast Rewards says:

  26 Nov26 November 12:09

  The odd thing was when all the other airlines in T3 and T4 were moved due to covid that CZ was allocated T5. It seemed odd at the time (I still thought it was SkyTeam). I don’t know if CZ operated any flights from T5 (are they flying to the UK yet?) but there’s still some signage remaining in T5C.

  • ABS says:

    26 Nov26 November 12:48

    They did operate a few flights out of T5 (I think it was weekly or every fortnight) and the Heathrow website did state that they were still operating out of T5 until very recently. I’ve just checked and it states T4 again when they do re-start operations.

    You’ll also be able to see some Qatar Airlines and AA signage and equipment near reclaim 10 in T5 it just hasn’t been removed.

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      26 Nov26 November 13:05

      AA and IB are still mentioned as being able to access the BA lounges in T5. I wonder if CZ had arranged any lounge access for the few flights they did actually run.

• Jonathan says:

  26 Nov26 November 12:50

  On some organised tours I’ve been very recently, there’ve been other travellers in the group who said that they’ve lived in China, and don’t really like living there very much, they didn’t go into any details

  Airlines like China Southern probably get at a large volume of their trade from Chinese nationals, so they won’t be too familiar in having many people from western nations

  Did anyone try that sweet spot with VS points on one of the two other (main) Chinese airlines, it was frequently mentioned, and a bitter blow when the redemption BA came unavailable due to the ending of agreements between the two airlines, although the ANA option appeared not too long afterwards, just a shame both countries the planes went to have been largely inaccessible for years for short stay visitors to say the least

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