Last night I just happened to catch a promo for Seattle's local "Evening Magazine" show and was thrilled to see that the crew has been filming on location in China.It's been 3.5 years since I've been back to China and anyone who has known me for long will tell you that I have been eating/sleeping/breathing China for the past 13 years.
So, when I saw the "Evening Magazine" promo, which then led into a blurb about the show giving away a trip to China, I was elated. Wouldn't it be great to win and get back to a place that I love so much?
Hold on... that elation was quite short lived, maybe 2 minutes tops when I logged on to learn more about the contest and discovered that low and behold the air transportation is being provided courtesy of Hainan Airlines. Hainan Airlines? Are you kidding?
I was nearly bowled over a few months ago when I read that Hainan Airlines was slated to begin offering non-stop flights between Seattle and Beijing. Why couldn't it have been any other airline? Air China, China Southern, even China Eastern (they used to fly via Seattle). But no, a little known airline named for the Hawaii-like Island just off southern China's coast just had to be the one granted the rights to the Seattle-Beijing route and subsequently be a sponsor and travel provider of "Evening Magazine's" contest.
Can Hainan Airlines really be that bad? If I could win that free trip wouldn't I take it Hainan Airlines and all? Actually, no. I have flown just about every airline in service in China and I specifically and absolutely will NOT fly Hainan Airlines.
Every single time that I have ever flown on Hainan Airlines I have nearly been put off from flying forever, yes forever.
My introduction to Hainan Airlines came via a flight from the southern Chinese tourist city of Guilin to the metropolis of Shanghai. The flight was full and passengers were continuing to board. The flight attendants had been stashing extra carry-on's in some of the empty seats because the overhead storage bins were full. When it was realized that the seats would be needed, the posted "Out of service" signs on the toilet doors and began stacking carry-on luggage in the toilet facilities (you must remember that when Chinese travel, they often bring a LOT of stuff with them). Once all of the seats were full and more passengers continued to stream onto the plane, workers were brought onto the planes with extra seating for the passengers. However there was no way to bolt those extra seats to the floor of the cabin. Oila! out came bungy cords and the new seats were strapped to the rest of the seats in the plane. To add insult to injury to the late arriving passengers, when it is departure time in China- it is departure time! Not every passenger had gotten strapped into his/her seat before the plane roared off and began to not only taxi down the runway, but to lift off. Right then I knew that Hainan Airlines would be an airline that I would try to avoid in the future.
Two years later a dear friend of mine and I decided to take a flight from Chairman Mao's home province of Hunan down to the tourist city of Guilin for some tourism research and photography. Mark didn't like me traveling alone in China so he took a few days off from working with adoptive families to go along. When I found out that we could only get a flight on Hainan Airlines or we would have to take an 18 hour train I decided to give Hainan Airlines one more try. When we got out on the Tarmac sheer panic took over when I realized that we would be flying in a 13 seat prop plane and guess who had drawn seat 13? Mark quickly realized that Americans don't always like the number 13 and swapped with me. As we climbed aboard you can imagine the hush that fell over the cabin when the other passengers realized that they had a waiguoren (foreigner) on board. Lots of stares and giggles from little kids later we finally began to prepare for take off. According to the airline representative the flight should only take 30-40 minutes. The first 20 minutes or so of the flight was breathtaking. Since we were flying in a smaller plane, we flew at a lower altitude and the countryside was just beautiful. However the further south we got the more thunderstorm cells we encountered. The pilot began to go around the cells instead of flying through them- thank you! But at one point our plane hit a rough patch of turbulence and suddenly dropped several hundred feet and rolled the plane on to its side. As one who has never liked roller coaster rides, I was a whole lot less than thrilled at this development and so were a lot of other passengers around us. Many Chinese people get motion sick and once the screams quieted a number of people got sick and one gentleman was so frightened he wet his pants. To add insult to injury, he got stuck in the bathroom after going in to get himself cleaned up. By this time we should have been arriving in Guilin, but due to the storms we ended up flying for another hour. It must have frightened the pilot too because for the rest of the flight we stayed at a much lower altitude and he seemed to handle the plane very cautiously. Once we landed in Guilin I told my friend Mark that I was done flying Hainan Airlines and I insisted on changing my airline ticket from Guilin to Guangzhou from Hainan Airlines to China Southern. Never again, I vowed.
Never say never... two years after that fateful flight I was once again staring increduously at a Haina Airlines ticket in my hand. I was escorting a group of travel agents who were tired and cranky from spending so much time at a small airport following a 3-day Yangtze River cruise. We all just wanted to get to Xian and the first flight I could get the group out on (after the fog cleared) was on Hainan Airlines. I quietly said "Oh no, I don't think I can do this" to the reservations agent, but with my limited Chinese and his limited English, I soon realized I was stuck.
I gathered the group and smiled and told them that we were on our way to Xian and would get to see the first snowfall of the year in Xian that evening - what a lucky sign for us. Ha!
The flight was pleasant, the plane fairly new, the crew well-trained and Benny Hill re-runs were being shown on the tv monitors. For a period of time I was lulled into thinking that I really should re-think my opinion of Haian Airlines. But wait... it was time for the descent into Xian. We were almost there... almost.
The flight crew came around to everyone and asked them to pull all of the window shades down saying that it was a regulation in China that all window shades must be pulled down during night landings in China. What? I had never heard that before. Benny Hill was turned off and Hawaiian music was piped over the loudspeakers.
As we descended and made that first bumpy contact with the tarmac I thought to myself, "piece of cake we're down". There was only one problem: we weren't slowing down. Apparently the runway was frozen over from the snow storm and our pilot was having some "issues". As we're barreling down the runway with Hawaiian music lilting in the background I found myself praying, "Please God, just get us to a standstill on the ground and I'll never ask for anything again". We finally slid off the runway and came to an abrupt halt. Never was I so glad to see the ground in my whole life. I would have walked from one end of China to the other rather than fly Hainan Airlines again-- and to this day I haven't.
As much as I would LOVE to win that trip to China-- I won't even enter the contest because it would be just my dumb luck that I would win. 14 hours trapped in the air with Hainan Airlines from Seattle to Beijing and then 14 hours back? I simply couldn't do it.
Taking a slow boat to China sounds good about now. Anybody want to go?
