My experience made two things abundantly clear: The airline has made a serious effort to improve its onboard product (and there was no smoking on this flight!), but it has a long way to go if it ever hopes to compete with five-star Asian airlines like EVA Air or ANA. A number of factors combined to create this reputation, including inedible food, apathetic and indifferent service, and the more-than-occasional bout of pilots and crew smoking on board.Įxactly seven months to the day after moving to Shanghai, I got the chance to fly China Eastern's business class on one of its longest and most prominent routes to New York-JFK.
It wasn't that long ago that China Eastern was on the short list of major airlines to avoid at all possible costs. Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available.
