Welcome to my flight reviews! I try and keep these short but useful.
For this one, I am merging both the outbound and return flights together, as they offered a very similar experience.
Airline: China Southern
Flight Number: CZ335 and CZ336
Class of Travel: Economy
Month-Year: January 2024
Route: Auckland to Guangzhou, Guangzhou to Auckland
My Score: 4/5
Purpose: Leisure trip
Check-In and Airport Experience
Check-In at Auckland Airport is a manual affair, online check-in is not available at all, so you must be at the check-in counters at-least 45 minutes before departure. There's lots of people checking in a lot of baggage on this flight, no wonder given its 2x 32kg bags allowed free of charge. If you have Skyteam then you can use the priority line which was empty. I have no status on Skyteam and flying economy, so no lounge review today. The same applies to check-in at Taipei / Tayoun International Airport - manual check-in and a flowing but long queue.
On arrival bags in all of Guangzhou, Auckland, and Taipei, bags were on the belt within minutes, and there were no arrival dramas.
Transit in Guangzhou is an interesting experience however. We had a 55 minute connection (CAN's MCT is also 55 minutes). At the airport, China Southern mixes and matches their aircraft across both domestic and international services meaning the aircraft can arrive at a very different terminal to international as its next flight is a domestic one. In both AKL-CAN and TPE-CAN, our aircraft parked at a domestic terminal gate, and passengers had to take airport tarmac busses to bus gates, where you go up the stairs into the arrival hall. The airport is MASSIVE (With over 150 gates) and so the bus can take up to 20 minutes winding across the tarmac to get to the arrival hall, usually standing room only.
In-Flight Experience
The China Southern Cabin Crew are a very competent team on all the sectors. They were friendly, professional, and quite frankly, got the job done very effectively. It was interesting to watch them in action as other airlines (especially the American airlines) could learn from. I also noted they did everything without any fanfare. On Air New Zealand you'd often see a bit of pomp with their "wines" and "award winning" service, whereas on China Southern - they delivered everything quickly, retrieved everything quickly, and stayed out of your way. Honestly it was a great experience. English is their second language, but there is no communication barrier and all the crew are competent in English and Mandarin. All the announcements are made in both languages, so you do need to sit through both - no different to any other airline flying between two very different countries.
Although there are no amenity kits or other delights (like playing cards SIA provides), they do provide a hot towel service, have wet-wipes, and offer bottled water.
The seats in economy are a standard affair across most airlines now and this is no different. The standard 32" seat pitch with a 16.3" width between armrests. It can get cozy with a wide shouldered person next to you.
Meals
For snacks, you get one option only - a sandwich. There is nothing else on-board if you get hungry.
For the dinner service, there was a choice of chicken and potatoes, or a beef noodle. I opted for a Hindu special meal (selfishly to get served first and fall asleep), and recieved quite a delicious chicken curry with dahl. I was quite surprised that they made it to indian tastes ex-AKL. On the way back, a fish masala curry was offered, again, surprising me ex-CAN.
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| HNML Dinner AKL-CAN |
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| HNML Dinner CAN-AKL |
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| VOML Dinner AKL-CAN |
The breakfast on AKL-CAN was excellent. The vegan option consisted of tofu and vegetables, while the indian option was a traditional indian breakfast.
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| VOML Breakfast AKL-CAN |
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| HNML Breakfast AKL-CAN |
Unfortunately, the breakfast option on CAN-AKL was basically deep fried mush-room and vegetables, the photo speaks for itself. For normal meal service, travellers got a western breakfast of sausage, hash-brown and eggs. I have no idea what they were going for with this Hindu meal, but it was a heavy pass after one bite for me.
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| HNML Breakfast CAN-AKL |
Lastly, there was some confusion about my special meal on CAN-AKL: I had ordered a Hindu meal and my partner a Vegetarian Oriental meal, but somehow they loaded me two meals both rounds. The flight attendants were quite confused and amused, but offered me BOTH trays for both meal services and didn't even bat an eye when I said yes. They seemed to enjoy my "Economy lottery" happiness.
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| Two stacks of dinner and breakfast |
Overall, a pretty good experience on China Southern, apart from the weird special meal breakfast I got and the transit at Guangzhou. For the price I paid ($1,600 NZD return to Taipei on Christmas Eve), the service to value ratio is exceptional.
