China Airlines

So awful. I’m 90% sure I got a bed sore from being crammed in between 2 strangers for 16 hours in what seemed to be the smallest seat ever. I get that the flight from NYC to Beijing is no fun, but I’ve never had such a bad experience roundtrip. The planes are SUPER stuffy, hot, and the seats are small. On my flight back, I thought I was lucky when I scored the front row in the middle aisle. More leg room, ya know. NOT! I had little kids legit running over my legs and in front of me, with no flight attendants to reprimand them. The man next to me peeled an orange and threw the peel bits on the floor. ICK! I was so happy I had Benadryl to knock me out for a good portion of that ride from hell. At least their food was decent? Never again!

NOTE: Review is for AIR CHINA (Mainland China carrier, not China Air (Taiwanese carrier). Could not find China Air flight at this terminal anymore.
WORST airline service ever. Showed up for a 12:50 flight to PEK from JFK for a business meeting. Flight was delayed FOR 6 HOURS due to a technical issue, so they have us all line up to rebook tickets and give us a $ 10 lunch voucher. $ 10 doesn’t get you much at JFK.
Air China is disorganized, has poor customer service, very difficult rebooking rules, and planes that have technical issues?!? Do NOT recommend. 非常不满意。

I wish I could give China Airlines a negative star.
My husband and I purchased flights from Saigon to Taipei for our honeymoon in August. In the fine print, it states to bring the original credit card when checking in. Our honeymoon was last month so we totally forgot and this isn’t a standard airline requirement to bring the original card. We get to the Saigon counter really early and were told that we could not check in because we didn’t show the original credit card. We had to purchase new sets of tickets if we wanted to check in. The counter barely explained in broken english what we had to do. Since we had to make it to Taipei, we purchased a whole new set of tickets. The counter promised us that all we had to do was call the Taipei branch office and they would process the refund.
We get to Taipei and the nightmare continues. We called the branch office and the person we spoke to could not understand our english. We only know some chinese and she kept shouting.“online! online refund!“
We figured out that she meant that we could process our refund online. We submitted on ¹¹⁄₂₀. Once we got back to NYC a week later, I called the China Airline NY office and we asked that they process our refund. I had to call several times and even submitted a quite harsh customer response until i received a response. I also did not receive the full refund. They took off $ 100 from the refund because we processed it online.
I refuse to accept this and will continue to call their office until I receive the full refund. This is awful customer service and I will never fly china airlines again!
Do yourself a favor… fly another airline in Asia.

I should know better when I saw how cheap the tickets were. Going to Beijing, I was stuck last row in the middle for over 13 hours. The first thing I found on my seat what someone else sitting there. Apparently other passengers here find it okay to loiter in the back since there aren’t usually passengers there. Except for me. And a really loud obnoxious man.
Am I spoiled when I was shocked not to find my own entertainment screen at my seat? There were some weird movies playing at a distance screen with Chinese subtitles, but I had no idea where the output was. That and I watched some of those movies already anyway.
Oh right, I forgot the most important detail: my seat had an ashtray. That’s how old the place was.

:Shudder:
China Air. I still have nightmares.
It was a double decker to Beijing.
A week before the Chinese New Year — packed to the gills!
Seats were in rows of 12 — in 3 sections of 4. I had a window seat.
The woman next to me picked and ate the scabs off of her face for 14 hours. The few times I had to pee, the 3 other women in my row grabbed and pushed my ass. I’m sure this was in an effort to help me, but it was not expected.
The food was awful.
Not enough drugs and alcohol to improve this trip!

if you on a budget then just pop a sleeping pills and hope that when you wake up you already arrive at you destination. this airline cut every other service known to flying (meas, crew, and one share movie screen on a twelve hours flight??? so out dated) the first class check in counter was just plain rude. speaking in a really offensive tone of voice. comanding us to pick up our own bag. when we complain they just didnt seem to care. so here a list of othe asia route airline ANA, JAL, KOREAN, CARTHAY PACIFIC, UNITED AIRLINE the price maybe just a tad more but they all sure better than China air. (i tried them all)

I wrote this review on Anchorage, Alaska’s Unilocal page, but out of concern that nobody will ever read it or make use of it I am re-​posting here.
I flew from JFK to Anchorage, AK to Taipei, Taiwan on China Airlines January 2010.
The flight attendants were very friendly and spoke both english and mandarin very well.
There was an issue with seat reservations. Seemed as though many people did not get their proper seat assignments; the people in my party being included in that group. At least one person was very vocal about not getting his window seat, which on a 10 hour flight could be really uncomfortable for some people.
Food was okay. I liked the meals they served, but the other two people with whom I traveled hated everything they served. My mom also got violently ill. The «snack» consisting of a BBQ squid sandwich on a bun made of packed rice was definitely a loser.
The planes were old. The seats weren’t torn up or excessively dirty like some people have said about the planes, but they certainly were not like the new planes on China Airline’s marketing materials. The Televisions in the aisles had receptions problems and were completely absent on the return flight leaving only the projector at the front of each section. The sound quality was also very poor to the point of being painful to listen to.
Cant complain too much. We landed safely and relatively on time.

This a flight review on my Sep 09 trip JFK-​ANC-​TPE-​CGK.
I found my tickets to Indonesia on kayak dot com. I haven’t flown on China Airlines — a Taiwanese carrier, before but knew my uncle did awhile back. Yes, it was the least expensive fare by as much as 150 dollars from the next air carrier. After I booked the tickets, I called central reservations for special meals and wheelchair-​assist for my dad. The agent was helpful and thorough in the arrangements.
We boarded the aircraft at Terminal One with our party being first. The 747 – 400 offered only movies screened the old manner vs. AVOD. The FA’s were attentive, multi-​lingual and skillful. They manage my meal arrangement well and was very tasty considering it was vegetarian.
Our layover in ANC
was prompt and efficient. Unlike at JFK, the gate agent offered to mail my correspondence for me before I board.
Second leg out of TPE offered the 330 – 200 which is ten times better. Like the 747, the seat pitch was wide enough to cross my legs and I have AVOD. Got to watch the Hangover and the Proposal.
In Jakarta, I had to call customer service to change my ticket. The phone rang without anyone answering. Tried several times during the week with no avail. Picked myself up and made my way on to their office at Wisma Dharmala. The agent again was helpful and had my e-​ticket arranged without a fuss. I thought to myself — «Lucky I’m in Jakarta to be able to change this ticket but boy, what do you do if I were anywhere else?»
I was able to accumulate NWA miles albeit less than 100% of miles flown. They didn’t charge extra for bags unlike the American carriers but they were strict on size of the carry-​on. Overall, I would fly with them again.