A nightly nightmare flight with Air China

Yesterday, I returned from China. The 5 hour flight ended up taking around 24 hours - including taxi transfers.

I was flying Air China, which - one would think since member of Star Alliance - would have some level of standards and some level of communication. My assumption was absolutely wrong. Air China is the worst airline I have ever been using. I have done more than 1000 flights already, I have been flying with probably around 100 different airlines, including charter airlines. But nothing compares to Air China. The airplanes are actually ok, but when it comes to service and information, it is a catastrophe airline

I arrived early to the airport, the weather was nice, even though a little cloudy.

I got checked in and found a light dinner, assuming to eat more on the airplane set to leave at 19.25.

The plane started boarding on time around 19.00. The weather was still good.

What then happened I don't know. They kept us waiting for 2 hours in the airplane, with absolutely no announcement on the speaker system. After these 2 hours the weather actually went bad. , and then they announced that we would be waiting for the thunder storm to stop.

They started serving the lousiest airplane meal I have tried (which says a LOT), still while the plane was on the ground, but I did not eat anything. After another two hours the thunder storm was intensified, and they send us out of the airplane into the now totally deserted airport. They did not tell anything, they just gave us a transit boarding pass. Questions by a lot of people in front of me when waiting for the transit boarding pass were ignored by the personnel, so I didn't bother asking anything.

Almost all other passengers and airplanes already left, except for a few airplanes targeted to leave around midnight (which it was now). All restaurants were closed, and Air China offered us no food, no drinks, not even water. Around 400 passengers had to use a single drinks machine which quickly was emptied. And I feel sad for those transiting passengers without small Chinese money to use for the drinks machine.

I checked the monitors in the airport, but our plane was not listed. The monitor for the gate was blank. I ended checking the internet pages for Beijing airport, and our plane seemed to be departed already. I also checked the web page for Bangkok airport, which did not show any information about the airplane arrival at all, even though it should already have arrived to Bangkok.

After another 5 hours of waiting in the airport (where there was practically no Air China representatives at the gate), they suddenly started boarding the plane around 4 o'clock morning. No speaker announcements, no nothing. After another waiting 1+ hours in the airplane taxiing we were finally airborne.

Well, I arrived to Bangkok around 10 hours later than expected. I had to make very expensive calls from Beijing to my hotel in Bangkok so that they did not cancel my booking, but I of course had to pay for the night when I did not show up. Thanks to Air China.

I have never experienced arrogance like this. Everyone in Air China was saying it was somebody else's problem. Everyone was referring to someone else (which was not there) etc.

I could partly understand if they were selling dirt cheap airplane tickets, but they charge prices which are more expensive than in Europe or America. But they behave like some very cheap African airline...

And now I know why there is no possible way that you can write an email or fill out a webform to get in contact with this airline, Air China. Simply because they do not want any complaints and they simply do not care about customer feedback.