I have not even taken off yet and I’m already regretting my choice to fly China Southern first class. Let’s hope things don’t get worse.
Reserving a seat assignment on China Southern is worse than pulling teeth or booking an award on Korean Air. Yes, it’s that bad. I called in for a seat assignment and after getting disconnected several times, finally reached an agent (after a 20-minute hold) who instructed me to e-mail a scanned copy of my passport to an email address she provided. Only after “verifying” me could China Southern reserve a seat for me.
(And yes, of course I wasted 30 minutes trying to view my booking on China Southern’s horrific website so that I could just reserve the seat myself.)
Anyway, about 24 hours later I received an email acknowledging that I was authenticated in their system. So I called again to reserve a window seat, 2K, on my A380 flight from Guangzhou to Beijing. Done.
Until I checked in and was handed a seat assignment for 1F. What happened to the window seat? The agent at the transit counter had no clue and insisted that all four window seats were taken.
Oh well, I headed to the China Southern First Class Lounge, which is the same as the China Southern Business Class Lounge…and boy was it crowded. So crowded it took me a good 10 minutes to find an open seat.
But at lest the seat I ended up getting had a power port…I could charge my phone and laptop.
Alas, no.
The power did not work…
Delayed
Boarding time approached and I gathered up my belongings and made my way toward the exit. As the only laowai (老外) in the lounge, the agent must have remembered what flight I was on and hit me with some bad news.
AGENT: “Sir, your flight is delayed. You can have a seat.”
ME: “Oh. How long is the flight delayed?”
AGENT: “New departure time…”
She did not know the English word, but wrote it on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.
23:30.
Lovely. Only a 4.5 hour delay…
(I cannot blame the delay on China Southern…it was attributed to poor weather in Beijing).
So I returned to my seat, which was already taken, and have spent the last five minutes scoping out another seat. An easy chair opened and I’ve decided to plant myself here until it is time to depart. There’s even a working power port.
Things are looking up!
Delays in and out of PEK is typical. I had 3 delayed flights in a row in and out of there, including a 10 hour wait in ULN, waiting for the inbound plane.
I’ve had success selecting seat assignments on China Southern via their mobile app. You might want to give that a try next time.
Seriously, no material defect in service was identified in this post except for the lack of dedicated F lounge. All other so called complaints are subject to interpretation…
Just a preview of the upcoming flight, which I’ve now completed.
A – M – A – Z – I – N – G
I’ll have a post about it tomorrow.
No Mickey, getting swapped out from a preselected window seat to a center seat in first class is certainly a “material defect”.
is that the same Thai a350 you arrived on in the first picture?
Booking award flights on Korean metal is super easy online. I never had to speak with anyone. First class space was always easy to find.
With the Big 3 Chinese carriers I insist on my travel agent do everything – seat assignment, meals and entering my ff number. You are lucky CS even picked up the phone. Air China just puts you on indefinite hold.
Another reason to use an agent is that the Big 3 Chinese carriers usually sell cheap fares through consolidators.
Never ever flying that shitty airline ever
Wait you sent your passport info to an email someone gave you over the phone in China? That coupled with them not giving you the same seat you ostensibly booked via that process would cause me concern about where that passport scan ended up. Overall- yikes to this trip so far. Hope it improves.
PEK is the worst airport to travel to and from. Guangzhou to Beijing, take the train, very fast and comfortable, always on time. I had flight from PVG -PEK -LAS on Hainan Airline. Due to the weather issue, my PVG to PEK was cancelled and none of the airlines have flights because mostly are cancelled. I bought a train ticket and take about 5 hours to get there.
I took this flight only to fly the China Southern A380 in first class. Ordinarily, I think you are correct – I would just take the train.
Dear China Southern,
Beijing is to the north. Stop sending Matthew’s flight south!
How long will you be in Beijing for, Matt? I am heading there this wknd and would love to meet up again.
Just transiting, unfortunately. Hope to catch up next time!
4.5h is about par for the course in Beijing, although they usually give priority for international departures.
I’m flying China Southern next week, LA to Guangzhou (then on to Thailand). Initially China Southern messed up my tickets for my family (I’d booked premium economy, they changed to economy with no notice), but after a 45 minute call, I managed a free upgrade to business class. I’m hoping for the best with on-time flights, it’ll be the first time with this airline (or Asia) for me. I’ll follow your site to see how your flights are going.
I hope that free upgrade stocks. I have my doubts. I’ll post tomorrow, but the flight itself turned out to be very pleasant.
In this situation it will most likely to be they have a equipment change to a plane with no PE. They downgraded you without a notice is normal act in China, but when you call they’ll have no choice but to upgrade you into Business or they will go against the CAAC regulations.
Their online seat selection process is asinine and byzantine.
As best as I can figure out, online reservations cannot be viewed unless the ticket was booked directly through the China Southern website. Partner award booking? You’re out of luck.
However… seat selection, which may be made via a separate section of the website, can be done with the appropriate China Southern reference locator number or ticket number.
The problem is, they require two factor authentication to access the seat selection interface, which means you need to provide either a phone number associated with your reservation so they can text you (naturally, only mainland Chinese numbers are acceptable) or an E-Mail address.
The E-Mail address works. However, you’re allotted only 60 seconds (there’s a helpful countdown timer included) from the time the e-mail is requested to when you need to enter/confirm the four digit confirmation code in their interface. Otherwise, the code expires and you need to request another one. Refresh your inbox quickly.
As for the actual seat selection interface itself… it’s surprisingly not bad.
Don’t bother checking in or choosing seats on any Chinese carrier unless you are booking say a points booking with CE through delta. That way you can book a specific seat. But if you book any Chinese airline from say kayak or Google flights. Don’t bother checking in or choosing seats. You will just get a error message.
China Southern is the most unorganized airline ever. As part of Sky Team, even Delta can’t pull seat assignments. I have had the same call experience where I paid $10 for a seat in the Economy Comfort only to be moved from a aisle seat in the front to a middle seat in the back.
Nobody speaks English so forget about trying to solve a problem. All I can say is good luck.
These are such real world problems, I see how they deserve a crappy blog post, Perhaps you should see if travel and leisure will publish them?
I typically enjoy reading your articles but this is 2 minutes I can never get back in my life. You just not travel to china must, a delay would be a norm. Yes they snagged the seat that was reserved for you. But they didn’t put you in a center on coach did they.
Such a winey post this time around from a “world” traveler.
You’ll be pleased to read this one:
https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2019/07/11/china-southern-a380-first-class/