Tag Archives for air china.
Smoke poured from an overhead bin after a lithium battery caught fire on board, sending passengers scrambling as flight attendants rushed in with extinguishers. The crew contained the blaze and the jet diverted safely after the dramatic in-cabin emergency.
Video shows a truck pulling the fuselage of an Airbus A330-200 on February 18 in Tianjin, China. It caused a traffic jam as the aircraft maneuvered through local roads on its journey to the Sunrise Dongjiang Camping Base where it is being repurposed into a tourism complex featuring flight simulators, aviation education, and dining and will open to the public on May 1, during the May Day holiday.
A passenger on Air China flight 2754 from Quzhou to Chengdu on Thursday opened an emergency exit door on the Airbus A319 – mistaking it for the door to the toilet. The emergency slide deployed, passengers headed down the slide, and the flight was cancelled.
Air China, which currently owns 30% of Cathay Pacific, is considering taking control of the Hong Kong-based airline. The Chinese flag carrier and Star Alliance member could cause a realignment of global airline alliances, moving Cathay from oneworld (American Airlines, British Airways) over to Star (United, Air Canada).
Star Alliance member Air China plans to operate a flight within the United States, from New York to Los Angeles.
The trick is that they will only be able to carry their own connecting passengers on the New York JFK to Los Angeles flight.
The country is especially cautious letting people in, because that risks re-igniting the virus. However there are Chinese nationals looking to return home. This is the story of what it’s like to fly today from Los Angeles to Beijing. Except you can’t actually fly to Beijing. Air China’s CA988 has actually been landing in neighboring provinces – either Shijiazhuang or Tianjin – for quarantine.
This trip cost $4900 one-way in coach on Air China, plus $1400 for hotel and food during a 14 day stay prior to release.
Chit chat while being towed doesn’t actually violate the U.S. sterile cockpit rule that only activities necessary for safe operation of the aircraft can be carried out when below 10,000 feet (technically, during critical phases of flight). However they’re being recorded.
What’s unusual is standing in the cockpit for takeoff. U.S. rules are clear that pilots must be belted in at the controls, and everyone else has to be belted in for takeoff and landing. There is no standing in the cockpit.
This week’s issue of Airline Weekly (subscription) contains charts on the largest airlines in each of the largest country markets in East Asia, based on Diio Mi data on scheduled seats in 2018.
The biggest takeaways are the growth of Chinese carriers and the declining importance in Southeast Asia of national carriers relative to low cost carriers which are overtaking them, especially on short haul and domestic routes.
Yesterday I helped someone with an Air China first class award. Air China certainly doesn’t have the best first class, and you might think it’s not worth the miles.
This is the story of an award booking that appeared to fail, but where perseverance got it ticketed. However there’s a better approach that takes some of the risk out of award booking.
I’ve held off writing about the Air China flight which lost cabin pressure and quickly descended 21,000 feet because there were missing pieces to the story that just didn’t make sense. The incident was being blamed on a pilot smoking in the cockpit.
While it’s understandable that a pilot doing so wouldn’t want to be outed out of fear for their job, it was not clear how the smoking was in any way related to the incident. Until now, that is.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
