Cheap Hainan Airlines

Cheap as mingy, miserly, penny-pinching, stingy, thrifty, tight, tight-wad…

I took the last flight from Kunming to Beijing an since it was arriving around 23, when express train and buses are not in traffic anymore, it was also the most convenient ticket.

I had planned my usual airport night and this time I discovered a 24 hours open Starbucks so at least it was more comfortable and with Internet.

What surprised me was that in the three hours flight between Kunming and Beijing on a completely full A330-300 we were served a tiny peanuts bag and a glass of soft drink or coffee/tea. That was all!!!

Ok, there was a nice entertainment system on every seat, good movies available from the boarding to the disembarking.

But in three hours flight in China I expect what most if not all the other companies I flight with: some food. In most of flight with length equal or larger than 2 hours you get warm food.

Hainan Airlines have clearly a different policy: movies, pretty stewardesses but nothing for the stomach!!!

Damn cheap!!

But dawn has come… here at Starbucks…

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – I watched a couple of American movies in the flight and during the first one, after some moments of confusion, I realized that they had reformat the movies muting the swearing!!! All f-words, s-words and similar were muted inside the dialog… and often it was difficult to understand the full sentences!! Too cheap to provide a meal… maybe because they spent too much for editing the movies??

Flood in Kunming

So lucky we are: Kunming is experiencing a terrible flood, the very first time ever in this period. So terrible that whole traffic in the city is collapsed. And in so many places the roads are flooded.

So the bus for the airport that we wanted to take at 10am, 25 yuan – one every 20 minutes, got stopped somewhere in the traffic. No other bus appeared until 11:30… Do they have only one??? At that point there were maybe 150 people waiting.

The usual pirate taxis were asking prices ranging from 50 to 100 per person and there were also few of them. A normal car was stuffing inside 6-7 people; I saw maybe 15 people getting inside one minivan and one guy sitting in the trunk of another car.

For this Panlei and I were “lucky”: we paid 75 yuan each but we were only 3 people plus the driver on the car.

Actually at the airport there are almost no delays and no cancellations until now because the rain was focused on the center if the city. Over here it is almost sunny!

Anyway later I’ll travel Beijing for starting the Dominique Rascle sensei China tour 2013 and the past days I have been exploring Lijiang and that area. Got more to post and pics to show but Internet was a luxury we did it have much over here. I hope in Beijing!