I flew Air China back to the UK last year, and would not do so again. The flights themselves were fine, but the overall experience of transiting through China was absolutely the worst.
I’ll caveat this by saying we were travelling with a one-and-a-half-year-old. The flight back to the UK was via Beijing. I thought I’d do the sensible thing of having a 24-hour layover there, taking advantage of the transit visa and booking a hotel close to the airport so we could break the journey into two for the little one. When we got to Beijing however, we were inexplibly told that they would not give us transit Visas, despite the fact we were transiting. No one would explain to us why this was, only that it was not possible, just rude assholes shouting mei ban fa at us. Cue 24 hours stuck in terminal 3 Beijing airport. We landed at 5 pm, got into the terminal at 6 pm and the only place serving any food at all was Starbucks. Starbucks for dinner then. After a shitty night sleeping on airport benches, what delights of Chinese cuisine could we expect for breakfast and lunch the next day? The options were Pizza Hut and KFC. That’s it. The only places to eat in the airport in the capital city of China were American fast food restaurants.
Well, that was an awful experience. At least coming back couldn’t be any worse right? On the way back we were transiting through Shanghai. This time we had a much more reasonable 4-hour layover. The boy slept very poorly on the flight, so the plan was to get off, stick him in the pushchair and push him around until he passed out. Surprise motherfucker! As someone else stated, for whatever reason, Air China don’t do transit properly at Shanghai airport, you have to go through passport control, get your bags and re-check in. In Beijing, we wanted to get into China and they wouldn’t let us. In Shanghai, we didn’t want to get into China, and they made us. This coupled with all the Covid forms filled out in triplicate, and a toddler having a meltdown, may have been even worse than on the way out.
I booked the flights to save money. It was not worth it. On top of the absolutely shitty experience, I also got an earful from the wife for my poor decision. I’ve learnt my lesson though. We’ve booked some direct flights with China Airlines for next year. It was a bit more expensive, but not by that much. Despite the savings, we’re never going to transit through China again.