My Thoughts On My Upcoming China Eastern First Class Flight…

by Zac George
a bed with a bottle and rose petals on it

Good evening from Bangkok!

I’m currently writing this post in one of the many Thai Airways Royal Silk lounges awaiting my connecting flight into Shanghai. A few weeks ago, I wrote how I had booked China Eastern First Class. At the time I didn’t think about it much and basically brushed it off but the last few days I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

There’s a few things that I’ve been thinking about and a few points that made me go WTF.

This could be my most interesting review yet…

I’ve been extremely lucky to be able to review some incredible onboard products like the Etihad ResidenceJapan Airlines First ClassCathay Pacific First Class etc.

I think that this maybe my most interesting and possibly most read post because I haven’t seen one written review online. I’m excited to see what the product is actually like and if it’s worth trying again (who knows’?)

Hardly anyone Actually purchases or redeems to fly the product…

This was possibly the funniest part of doing the booking. I rang Qantas to book it and one of the phone the agents said this ”In my 10 years of working in the frequent flyer department, I’ve never seen anyone redeem points to fly it”. I guess that gives me an Idea of what it probably is like.

The China Eastern onboard experience is quite interesting from what I’ve seen…

If you’re on social media and follow those passenger shaming pages, you’ll often see stories of very interesting things being done onboard flights. And a lot of the time it tends to be Asian carriers for some reason, not singling any race or carrier (trust me, all airlines have weird stuff happen).

Possibly the most intriguing thing I’ve seen on these carriers are people smoking onboard and it’s often the crew! Ben at One Mile At a Time & Matthew at Live and Lets Fly experienced this first-hand on a flight last year.

The booking and seat selection is a bit of a pain…

This was the most confusing part of the booking. Apparently, on China Eastern, you can’t select your seat online and have to do it over the phone. I tried a few phone numbers but didn’t have much luck. According to Expertflyer, I’m the only one in First and it looks like I’ve been assigned a seat already.

The other thing is verifying the booking. You enter your ticket number and name into the system and it verifies the booking, except it wouldn’t work for me for some reason and kept giving me an error message.

So who’s looking forward to seeing what China Eastern First is like?

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15 comments

Louis April 25, 2017 - 1:59 am

Two words for you “Good Luck”.

Zac George April 25, 2017 - 2:10 am

hehe – Thankyou

MEOW April 25, 2017 - 2:21 am

WOW! Really excited for this one!

Michael April 25, 2017 - 2:52 am

how many miles did it take to book it? How’d you accumulate so many Qantas miles?

Zac George April 25, 2017 - 9:36 am

3/4 of the booking were from an Amex transfer and the last 1/4 was just usual flying.

Anthony April 25, 2017 - 2:46 pm

I’m currently trying to figure out the best transfer rate with Amex. I have a lot of points, just moved to Osaka. However, happy to fly out of Tokyo HND or NRT. Tbh NRT is a bit of a joke. Anyway, open to suggestions for the best transfer value – for a business upgrade. Stopovers fine. Thanks 🙂

John April 25, 2017 - 3:00 am

In my experience the ticket verification tool on their site only works for tickets issued by China Eastern

Zac George April 25, 2017 - 11:55 am

Ah ha – that makes a lot more sense. They really need to word the website better or I need glasses 😉

Ryan April 25, 2017 - 3:04 am

I flew China Eastern last November SFO-PVG-HKT. It was an interesting experience. The website is truly awful. Couldn’t register for Wifi, couldn’t select seats, couldn’t check in online. The customer service people at the airport were friendly, but English was definitely spotty. Food on board was the worst I’ve ever had from an airline. The plane was nice though, everyone was friendly, and they did a good job of keeping bathrooms in coach clean.

Gordon April 25, 2017 - 5:16 am

This is the link for their Oceania site: http://oa.ceair.com/muovc/newsitefront/seat/load!emdSeatLoad.shtml. It only allows seat changes for “Economy Class, exit rows, and part of the seats from Row 34 to Row 40 and Row 62 to Row 65”. I used to work for the contract company that handles CE in New York. CE’s office and customer service in NYC is nonexistent. Their methods of contact seems to be QR codes for Facebook, WeChat, and Eastern Miles. Good luck as well.

jody April 25, 2017 - 8:25 am

Godspeed.

Clea Anderson April 25, 2017 - 10:14 am

I was happy with China Eastern flight! I was very leary, since this was my first international flight. We sat in coach. The plane was newer, food okay, and friendly service. The first class section looked amazing. I was able to choose seats thru Orbitz. I will use them again.

Ryan April 25, 2017 - 11:50 am

Food = disgusting
Smoke – get ready to sniff the nastiness, take off to touchdown. First Class gets it worst
Service – BAD
Plane and Bathrooms – Spotless
food – SWILL

Soltatio April 25, 2017 - 9:31 pm

Often logging into the website requires you to put your name in the order that they would have names in China. For example Asiana used to require you to put your last name then first name then initial all as one. Ex. SmithJohnS That might help then recognize it but I have no idea what the format for China Eastern would be.

evelyn September 24, 2019 - 9:39 pm

China eastern airlines – worst website I have ever come across.

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