Fly across the New Year (1/3)

Flight Information

4 cities, 24 hrs 30 mins, across 7544 miles, on Jan 1st...

Depart CTU

After a short break for mental, it's finally the day to fly back for another school preparation. While TFU (Chengdu Tianfu Intl' Airport) was relatively new and closer to where I was live, CTU (Chengtu Shuangliu Intl' Airport) offered much more options for fleets.

Airport Check-in

Air China's VIP check-in area at CTU

From downtown Chengdu, it took about 40 mins for me to get to the airport. In the ride app DiDi, it automatically directed to the gate that close to the vip check-in areas of Air China at CTU Terminal 2. While at around 10:30 in the morning, there were not many passengers waiting. However, when it's my turn, I realised that the Air China staff was not familiar with the international connection procedure.

Desinated check-in counter for international connections

To complete the through check-in, the staff took me to a desinated check-in counter for passengers connect to international destinations via PEK (Beijing Capital Intl' Airport) and SZX (Shenzhen Bao'an Intl' Airport). I asked the staff whether it is possible to through check-in for connection via PVG (Shanghai Pudong Intl' Airport), they told me in that case passenger need to re-check their luggage so they will only provide the boarding pass to PVG. After finish the immigration document check, I finally got three boarding passes printed for my whole trip on that day.

Airport Lounge

As a hub, Air China provides separate security check lane for CTU-PEK passengers.

As a business class guest, I went directly through the premium lane for security check. The Air China Lounge is right after security. Compared with photos shared by others, the size and decoration of Air China lounge at TFU seemed better than the this one. But for my experience, it's still one of my favorite lounge in Mainland China, especially considering the food and drinks provided there.

It's easy to locate the lounge after clearing the security check.

In the self-serve dining area, there were a lot of foods provided, including Szechuan-special noodles for order. The drink refrigerator had a wide variety of choices (Maybe the best one that I've even been to). Although the lounge is relatively small, there were not many guests at that time, so it was pretty easy to find a seat.

Some Szechuan-special Noodles that can be ordered

A wide variaty of choices for drinks

My first meal of the day, probably a chinese "brunch"

In Flight

After finishing my "brunch", the boarding annoucement took me to the Gate 147 for my first flight of the year 2024. The boarding started a little bit late as usual for that flight. Today's CA 1422's fleet is an A350-941 with tail no. B-321N. It was a pity that the plane is not the one that equipped with the newest business class seat product -- Recaro CL6720. Instead, it was our old friend Rockwell Collins Super Diamond, which I dislike for long-haul flight due to its limited width when completely lie-flat.

Boarding started a little late at Gate 147

Takeoff Runway was 02R

METAR ZUUU 010000Z 28002MPS 240V310 2300 BR SCT040 08/07 Q1022 BECMG TL0030 1400

Since it's the first day of the year, the cabin crews offered us a warm welcome when everyone's onboard. The flight was smooth, and took 2 hrs 56 mins to reach our destination PEK. For the in-flight meal, I chose the Kung Pao Chicken Rice. The taste of the steamed rice is good, but there were too few meats in the dish. Besides the meal, the flight attendant offered small bookmarks printed with their mascot panda as a new year's gift.

Just the regular Super Diamond business seating product

The new IFE system was more similar to the one used on CR trains, pretty slow response

Second meal of the day, Kung Pao Chicken Rice Meal offered on CA 1422

New Year bookmark gift from Air China

Arrive

At 3:36 pm, our flight CA 1422 arrived at PEK Terminal 3, 15 mins late than original flight schedule.