hello my name is Paul Stewart and I'm standing next to a very large bridge and
today I'm flying with the new airline China Eastern airways. Now the Middle
Eastern Three, so Qatar, Etihad and Emirates have done a really good job of expanding
over the last few decades and appealing to the Western markets but the Chinese
airlines have been lagging behind so I thought it might be interesting to check
out China Eastern's first-class product and see how it compares to all the other
more established airlines. Before I get to the flight, make sure you check
out my channel for a whole lot more aviation related videos and feel free to
subscribe and tick the notification bell so that you get notified whatever I upload
a new video. Now sit back and enjoy the show!
As always the journey begins at check-in with the usual priority lines so
dropping off my bag was a painless process and then it was through security
and into their lounge. China Eastern don't have their own lounge so they paid
access to China Airline's lounge which is Taiwan's national airline. The lounge
could be described as 'average at best' although China Eastern do have their own
private room for first-class passengers. Inside there
you've got more seats but that's about it. If you want to snack you'll need to
head back out into the main lounge and help yourself. When I review
first-class products I do like to fly from the airlines home port as they
usually put far more effort into their own lounges so I won't dwell on the fact
that this was reasonably average, especially for first-class!!
As you can see the view isn't great so after a quick bite, l I headed for the
departure gate where I managed to see my aircraft arriving. In fact San Francisco
Airport offers pretty good views of the apron which makes it a pretty cool
Airport to visit if you're an avgeek. China Eastern's flagship aircraft is the
Boeing 777-300ER and they have 20 of them in their long-haul fleet. This particular
one is four and a half years old and is powered by two GE90 engines which as any avgeeks
know, make for some pretty awesome spool-up sounds. Now you can't really
appreciate just how large these engines are until you watch the ground staff
dwarfed by this great circular monsters.
Boarding eventually began and I was shown to my seat by a friendly crew member.
It's a small first-class cabin with only six seats in a 1-2-1 layout which I was
sharing with two other passengers.
Shortly after sitting down a warm towel and a glass of champagne was
offered. Now let's have a look through my suite in more detail. You've got this
handy storage spot for clothes integrated into the wall and in front of
you is this TV screen which was reasonable. Under that you've got this
rather odd looking sliding table which disappears into the footrest and the
storage thing I'll show you that later though. Of course there's electric Sun
shades which save you leaning too far forwards but limit your view.
On the other side there are buttons for the seat, inflight entertainment
power plugs and very excitingly there's this little air vent which I was
really glad to see since there were no overhead air vents.
Because of the big glass pane covering the three windows you couldn't
get close to the actual circular windows so sadly my view was average. So this
foot thing folds down to form the end of the bed and you can also fold the table
into it if you want to completely get it out of the way. Here's a table back
out again and the slippers, pajamas and amenity kit. As always I'll be giving
away the amenity kit to a subscriber so make sure you check out the end of the
video for more details about that giveaway. The PJs themselves are
comfy and felt like they were decent quality. Here's the headphones and a top-up of
the champagne was brought around. The gate closed and we headed for the runway
on a reasonably miserable windy and rainy day in San Francisco. As the takeoff
footage was pretty sad especially since I was too far forward to get a good view
of the wing and engine, i'll only include the spool up.
As soon as we cleared the rough weather, the crew started preparing lunch. Being
the typical millennial that I am, the crew knew that I would be keen to get into social
media and one of the flight attendants came and connected my phone. While the
Wi-Fi was free, it was incredibly slow and I didn't really use it but anyway
make sure you check me out on Instagram and Facebook for heaps of aviation nerd
photos. As it's a 12:15 departure from San Francisco, lunch was served beginning
with this pear and goat cheese canape and beef tenderloin skewer. There was also a
bowl of warm nuts and a top-up at the champagne. For the foodies out there I'll
include full pictures of the menus at the end of the video. Now I thought the
table was pretty well set out although unfortunately the napkin didn't have a
hole in it so I couldn't connect it to a button in my shirt, so of course being
the grot that I am, within a minute it was on the floor and my soup was on my
t-shirt. The selection of bread tasted fine as did the braised chicken soup
with codonopsis and wolfberry, whatever on earth those two things are.
Following that was the appetizer - roasted five-spice duck with cuttlefish which
tasted fine. Now do you remember having mice in high school and you would keep
them in those cages, then on the floor you had this grassy stuff? Well I am
fairly sure that's with this salad was and finally the main course which was
pan-fried beef with oriental black pepper sauce. In a spirit of pretty bad
analogies do you remember when you were 18 or 19 and had no money so you had to
buy canned stews and soups and you always wondered if they came from a dog
food factory because they kind of smelt like there did? Well, yes the beef
wasn't great. There was a nice selection of food for dessert and some crisp fruit
followed by some cheese and bits and then of course ice cream and a chocolate
cake all washed down with some Bailey's Irish Cream.
At the front of the cabin instead of two more seats in the center they've set up
this display and under those are storage lockers which made up for the lack of
storage in the suites and the no overhead lockers. Now the flight
attendant told me that I should let her know but I wanted to sleep and she'd
make my bed. I said I might later as I wasn't even tired and it was only the
afternoon in San Francisco. Shortly afterwards,
she came back and insisted that that bed be made which I thought was kind of odd
for first class. Anyway I went for a squiz at the bathroom and got into my
PJs. The toilet itself was lacking in amenities, such as toilet brushes ...etc, but
otherwise it was pretty spacious for an airliner toilet.
When I returned to my seat, it had been converted into a bed. While it is
wide and low enough, the mattress was fairly thin and would have benefited
from an additional layer. As I actually wasn't sleepy, I didn't care too much so
I closed the doors and settled down for a movie.
The in-flight entertainment itself worked okay from a hardware perspective
with decent image quality although the content itself was very limited.
There weren't many movies and even less TV shows. Now I understand the English
isn't their native language but that hasn't stopped Emirates, for comparison's
sake, from having a huge amount of English content and if they're wanting
to enter the English market, entertainment is something they'll have
to work on. I think I watched one movie and otherwise stared at the
roof. After a bit of a nap, I had a cup of tea and another warm towel was
brought around. Another unusual thing about this flight was that they served
breakfast just before we land into Shanghai at 6:00 in the evening local
time. I would have preferred dinner but anyway
Unfortunately I can't work out what this is and can't find the picture of the
breaky menu so apologies but it appears to be a combination of Western
and Eastern food. It was averaged so I asked for an
additional fruit plate, which tested fine. In fact I was surprised by how fresh the
fruit on this flight was. Shanghai was getting closer and after 10 or so hours
our slow descent began so I guess it's time to give you my thoughts on China
Eastern first class. Let's be honest, and having watched this far you know I'm not
going to give it glowing praise, and they still have a long way to go if they want
to properly enter the Western market. Now the service itself was mixed. My primary
flight attendant was actually quite good and incredibly prompt with empty plates
removed immediately and the drinks topped up. The rest of the crew, on the
other hand, seamed less involved. I could see that they were supervising her so
I'm assuming she was new although I barely saw them otherwise. I always make
an effort of remembering the crews names although I don't recall any
introductions and never met the chief flight attendant. As you can see from our
footage the food was only average and the drinks were actually pretty poor.
I'll include the drinks menu at the end but a 12 year old whiskey is the kind of
stuff you clean paint brushes with and shouldn't be in a first-class cabin.
But the seats, on the other hand, were perfectly fine they were more spacious
than they look and I didn't feel at all claustrophobic
when the doors were closed.
There's limited storage with these two ledges being the only places within
arm's reach to store anything. I did really like this air vent, though, as I always
find aircraft cabins too hot. I actually had an interesting experience with the
window blinds and I'm keen to get your thoughts on it. Another passenger asked me
to close them and when I opened them again while afterwards he asked the crew
members to tell me to lower them again. Now don't get me wrong if it's a flight
where you need to change your sleep cycle or the the Sun will rise very
shortly after falling asleep, I'm perfectly happy to lower them by this
flight left San Fran at midday and arrived at Shanghai at 6 in the evening
so it wasn't really a flight where you needed to sleep. I love the window seat
and I always select it so that I can enjoy the view so I was a little
disappointed at being told that I had to keep the windows closed. Now feel free to
comment below and vote in my poll as to what I should have done. One final thing
that really annoyed me was that they took their headphones before you land so
throughout the last 20 minutes of the flight, I couldn't hear the in-flight
entertainment. I'm assuming that is so that they're not stolen but surely they could
collect them as we walk off the plane. Maybe I'm being precious but the
implication that I can't be trusted not to steal headphones seems a little tacky
for first class. And finally to the amenity kit giveaway entry is open to
everyone over the age of 13 and you've got 30 days to enter by simply
commenting below including the text (MUFirstClass) brackets. If you enjoyed
the video please give it a thumbs up and check out my channel for many more
similar videos including first-class reviews of Emirates, Qatar, Qantas, Cathay,
Malaysian, BA and very shortly Japan Airlines and just before I go to the
menus, here's an interesting site. A Mahan Air Airbus A340 which is an airline
you never get in Australia and an increasingly rare aircraft type as well.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you another time.