Hainan Airlines
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I recently flew to Bangkok via Beijing…
I recently flew to Bangkok via Beijing using Hainan airlines. I booked before reading any reviews ( daft I know) and was really worried about everything after reading the reviews on here. my flights, luggage, the service, the food. But I can honestly say I needn’t have. I couldn’t check in online the day before and got a very terse response from the websites online customer service. But this is apparently standard and there were no issues checking in for any of my four flights. Maybe Expedia who I booked with should make customers aware of this so they don’t worry needlessly. The staff on my every one of my flights were pleasant and professional, but on the last flight from Beijing to Manchester they were absolutely lovely. They couldn’t have done any more for me and they were so polite and spoke great English. The food was mainly Chinese (shocking I know for a Chinese airline to provide Chinese meals, I only mention this because others have complained about it) but there were European options on every flight and I found all the food to be of a high standard. I didn’t drink any alcohol during my flights except the very last and they were more than happy for me to have two whiskey and sprites with no attitude or issue like some others have experienced. My luggage was checked in and collected at my final destination unlike some others on here who have said they needed to collect and re check while at Beijing but I didn’t experience this. Beijing airport isn’t the best. it has a small duty free a Starbucks and two identical restaurants at both ends of the small international terminal that didn’t really look very appealing. The seats are made so you can’t lay down if you have a long layover and there are constant announcements in Chinese and English crackling through an ancient tannoy system that seemed purposefully disturbing. all international passengers have to pass through a one man passport control and security area that would have had me worried as hell if I hadn’t had long layovers both ways!! The queue was horrendous going out but coming back I sailed through. You can’t take any lighters or aerosols and some portable chargers aren’t allowed on any planes in china so I’d advise to only take stuff you don’t mind getting confiscated. All that being said Beijing airport isn’t Hainan airlines responsibility and they can’t really be held accountable for the sparse selection of amenities there. The only other issue I had was that I didn’t realise the flights weren’t atol protected until I got an email about my first return flight changing time, it was only an hour later and I originally had a 7 hour layover in Beijing so it worked out for the best. I do find it concerning that at no time during the booking process did Expedia mention my flights weren’t protected. I would have been screwed if any of them had been cancelled or late leading to me missing ongoing flights. So keep this in mind if you do book with them as it might stop me from using them in the future even though everything else was great.