Rating an airline - China Southern Airlines

Dhalphir

Hi guys,

In middle of next year, my wife and I are flying to Belgium for our second wedding reception for my wife's family. We're currently shopping around for deals...we plan to leave early June and arrive back in Perth, Australia in late June.

We've found a few flights with airlines around the 3000-3200 USD mark and we'd like to stick close to that if we can.

My primary question is that we found an ideal flight with China Southern Airlines flying from Perth to Amsterdam. However, reading some reviews of that airline - the in flight entertainment seems very very limited - some reviews even saying there was no English in-flight entertainment. This is a big problem for me - I usually cannot sleep on planes, and thus an 11 hour flight with nothing but a Kindle for entertainment sounds to me like torture and will be a total dealbreaker. However, its possible that the reviews mentioning the lack of English IFE were for flights using China Southern Air flying to or from China itself - and I can kind of understand that. Would this apply to all of the airlines flights? Does anyone have personal experience with this?

Thanks

Tastyfish

A portable DVD player? They're pretty cheap nowadays if you don't mind a 3hr battery, even ones with a 6hr battery are only about £120. You can also find quite a few websites online that sell the laptop type batteries that run them, if you really needed a full flight's worth of TV.

Orestus

I use airlineequality.com for airline reviews, they have an extensive collection and reviewers almost always mention the route they took, so you can find your exact route and see what people thought. I skimmed the first few pages for China Southern and it looks bad for English entertainment options.

I flew Beijing to Malaysia about 2 years ago on China Airlines - that is China's premier flag carrier so generally you'd expect the highest level of service on that airline of any Chinese one - and the IFE was Chinese only. That was a 7.5 hour international flight, so not just a short hop within China or anything. Based on that I'd expect to have very limited to no English IFE on a China Southern flight.

Anecdotal as well, but having spent a bit of time in China there is very little provision made for English (or any other languages), and China Southern is like I said not their premier flagship carrier, so I would not be surprised at all if English options are limited to non-existent. The outstanding service and options of most East Asian carriers (ANA, Sing Air, Malaysian, Cathay Pacific etc) definitely do not apply to the Chinese versions.

Wezoin

I know it's not the middle of next year so I dunno when you're flying, but a quick Expedia search showed jet airways, virgin australia, and qantas all have flights in the $2200 per person range in January if you fly on Thursday's. If you can work it out so you can fly Thursdays instead of Fridays it's usually cheaper and hopefully you'd be able to afford an English speaking airline that way.

Anarchy Rules!

I get the feeling that you chaps have missed a primary avenue of approach, ie. contacting the airline directly, or possibly a travel agent.

CyberJackal

Kind of sounds like your question might already be answered, but you may want to check with the airline about the possibility of an electrical outlet being available in-flight. If one is, then that would open up a lot of possibilities for you bringing your own entertainment options.