Chinese airlines have been serving up the cheapest flights on the market for as long as we can remember. But after disappearing completely during the pandemic, we wondered if we’d ever see them again. Cut to 2024, and, oh boy, are they back! 

Especially if you’re based in Europe, these airlines have consistently undercut their European or Middle Eastern counterparts on price for loooooads of long-haul routes to places like South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. This has left lots of members asking, “What is it actually like to fly via China, and what can I expect if I book a ticket on one of these airlines?”.

After planning to head back home to Sydney for a wedding, Flight Finder Larissa took the plunge and booked a return trip from London with China Southern. Here’s her review on what it was like to actually fly with one of these airlines, and what you can expect if you do the same. 

Flight & aircraft details:

1. CZ304 – London Heathrow (LHR) to Guangzhou (CAN) on a Boeing 787-9 

2. CZ325 – Guangzhou (CAN) to Sydney (SYD) on an Airbus A350

3. CZ302 – Sydney (SYD) to Guangzhou (CAN) on an Airbus A350

4. CZ303 – Guangzhou (CAN) to London Heathrow (LHR) on a Boeing 787-9

–  The plane’s seats, cabin and the cabin crew’s uniforms looked like they were out of the ‘90s, but that’s a purely aesthetic point and didn’t negatively affect our experience flying on these planes.

Many flights transiting through China have a looooong layover on at least one of the legs. Ours came on the way home, between Guangzhou and London, where we had to wait a whopping 8 hours in the airport. You can find out more about the delights of Guangzhou Terminal 2 below, but it’s safe to say that an extended layover when you just want to get home isn’t ideal. 

To get around this, I’d recommend you pay for an airport hotel (which is usually pretty cheap in China). Or, make the most of your stopover and extend it a few days (if you don’t mind navigating the tricky rules of the Chinese transit visa). Sitting in the airport for your whole layover (the way we did it) is definitely the worst way. 

– The seats and legroom were to the same standard I would expect on any long-haul service, so no nasty surprises there. Despite the cheaper price, it is a full-service airline, so we didn’t have to deal with a ‘budget airline’ experience.

And because Chinese airlines don’t have the same restrictions over Russian airspace at the time of writing, the flights between China and Europe are faster than European airlines by about 60–90 minutes.

General Facilities 

– You can expect the usual blanket, pillow and headphones trio on your seat when you board. As is common with other airlines flying routes to/from Asia, you’ll also be served a piping hot hand towel before and after your meal service. 

The seats had adjustable headrests, 2 universal power sockets for every 3 seats, a headphone jack and USB A ports, plus dimmable windows on the 787 and window shades on the A350. The seat-back entertainment screen was nice and big, too. Pretty typical stuff that you would expect on a full-service carrier.

– No complimentary Wi-Fi, unfortunately — there was a QR code on your seat back where you could go to the website and buy Wi-Fi for your journey. The price was just over £20 for Wi-Fi, and almost £9 for in-flight messaging for what, I assume, is the length of the flight (12 hours to China, or 9.5 hours to Sydney), and you’ll have to pay for each leg individually.

Keep in mind that the Wi-Fi on these planes likely suffers the same geo-blocked restrictions that the Chinese government has put in place on the ground — that means most of your typical messaging apps will likely not work. 

Considering some airlines (like Singapore Airlines) now offer Wi-Fi packages for free, this is a mark against China Southern. No amenity kits here, either :-(

Food

This is the one category where I feel like I was let down by China Southern. Even 7+ months after my flight, the food is burned into my memory, and not for a good reason. 

Let me set the scene: the type of food offered on China Southern (depending on where you’re travelling from/to) will be mainly Chinese food. Yep, groundbreaking, we know. And the quality is fine – it’s similar to what you’d expect from your local takeaway. But the problem I had with these meals was the lack of variety. 

In general, I’m a fan of the Chinese food I eat in the UK – I enjoy the odd takeaway, and I love dumplings and noodle soups. But 2 meals x 4 flights = 8 times, I was offered the same choice: chicken with noodles or beef with rice. And that was it, for over 20 painstaking hours of flight time. Totally fine after the first, second time and even the third time. But on the return journey, I couldn’t stomach having the same meal again, so I snacked on my emergency rations of chips and chocolate instead. 

So in summary: the food quality was fine, and the dishes were tasty, but very repetitive. If you know you’re not going to want noodles for breakfast, pack something else to eat. 

They also gave us the choice of the usual selection of soft drinks, juice (the peach juice was my favourite), tea and wine. Their drinks service happened before your meal and then another round during your meal, so more regularly than on some other airlines. You can reserve special meals like vegetarian, kosher etc., but to do this it seems you have to call their customer service line — I don’t remember being able to reserve this via their website. 

FWIW: I’ve seen other reviews of China Southern showing different meals than the ones I was offered, so this variety may have improved since I flew with the airline in March 2024.  

Entertainment

When I boarded my first flight at Heathrow on Thursday evening, I was most excited to see what the in-flight entertainment on China Southern had in store for me. Unfortunately, once I sat down and powered it on, I realised my screen was broken, and the home screen was frozen in place. Ouch. It was clearly pure bad luck, since everyone around me had a working screen, and it just meant my phone got a workout with saved episodes of Selling Sunset. 

Thankfully, my other 3 flights had a working entertainment system. It was standard for what you’d expect on a long-haul flight — lots of Western blockbusters and popular TV shows, plus a whole category of Chinese-language entertainment too. I have read in the past that the airline heavily censors their entertainment, but I didn’t notice this on my flights. 

Cultural Aspects

If you’ve ever flown on a Chinese airline before, you’ll be familiar with the security officers who are present on every flight. Flights with China Southern are no different — you’ll usually see this person sitting in the front row of the economy cabin, dressed in a uniform and wearing a body camera. While you may spot them walking up and down the aisle during your flight, to tell you the truth, I don’t remember seeing our officer at all during our flight. They’re there to discourage antisocial behaviour on the flight and do have the power to arrest passengers who are behaving badly, but they won’t bother you unless you’re acting up. 

The announcements are spoken in Chinese over the PA system before they’re repeated in English. Otherwise, there’s nothing else on China Southern flights that’s particularly different or notable when compared to airlines I’ve flown long-haul before, like British Airways, Cathay Pacific or Qatar Airways.   

Staff and Service

Overall, the staff were friendly and very efficient with meal and drinks services. They all spoke English, too. Nothing else to really mention on either a positive or negative note. 

I have read other passengers online reporting that customer service is a sore point with Chinese airlines/terminals as a whole, particularly if you need help or something goes wrong. We never needed to ask a question of the staff or the airline, so I can’t speak to that. 

Each of our flights took off on time, and we even landed over an hour early on our flight from Sydney to Guangzhou. I can imagine that if we had a tighter connection, we would have really appreciated that. But in reality, it just meant more time in the airport…lucky us!  

In the Airport

Ah, Guangzhou Terminal 2. Where I spent waaaay too much of my life this year. Let me first start off with the positives: 

• The airport is modern, clean and has lots of space to relax, with rows and rows of chairs. Some of them were even proper reclined ones, where we parked up for at least 3–4 hours of our layover.
• There is a Starbucks for anyone who wants a taste of home, plus a really good-looking noodle place and a fun little exhibition space where you can learn a bit about the produce of the area. 

Okay, now onto the juicy stuff:

• The transit line to get into the terminal once you deplane is buuuuusy. I assume most people flying into Guangzhou are connecting to another flight, but it took us a good 30–40 min to transit. And once you get through, there’s another line for a security check before you’re set free, but at least that was quick. 
• Having to spend 8 hours in any airport isn’t fun (except Changi, maybe. But that’s an outlier). This one is particularly boring — it’s a massive, soulless building with very little to see, very few shops and only a couple of restaurants. So there’s really nothing to do but sit. They apparently hold the title of the ‘world’s largest single-building terminal’, but with very little to fill all that space. 
• The lounge was far too expensive for what it (apparently) is. I say apparently because we never stepped foot in there, after being told a lounge pass was in the region of $30-$40 USD/pp per HOUR. Our 8-hour layover would have put the price of lounge access over $500 for 2 people, and from all the reviews I’ve seen online about this and other lounges in Guangzhou, it definitely wouldn’t have been worth it. Considering you can usually get a lounge pass for at least a few hours/a day pass for the same amount in other places, there was no incentive for us to pay that money. 
• We couldn’t access the ‘free’ Wi-Fi in the terminal :-( The network does show up on your phone, but doesn’t work once you connect. Apparently, this is a very common problem for travellers passing through Guangzhou. 
• The SkyTrax 5-star rated terminal signs were mocking us everywhere we went, and after all we’d seen, we were sceptical of how they had earned that rating. If you’re not familiar with our thoughts on SkyTrax, read our guide here. 

Overall Rating — 3/5 

My final thoughts: China Southern is great value for money if you get your fares on the cheap. I think I’d like to save at least £200 as a general rule for it to be worth it for me to fly them long-haul again. That’s not to say they weren’t decent — in most respects they were absolutely fine. But the food issue and the annoying layover were significant enough for me to choose another airline if I could guarantee a better experience for a comparable price.

TLDR

Service: Attentive and efficient, but nothing overly positive or negative to note.

Facilities: A little dated, but has everything you’d expect from full-service airlines.

Food: Plenty of drinks and food provided, but very little variety.

Timing: Can’t fault them — we took off on time on each of our flights.

Quality VS Price: Definitely worth it if you want a full-service experience on a low budget.

Bonus: China Eastern

I am not the only one within the team who has flown on a Chinese airline. Here’s Marketing Guru Drew’s experience of flying to Japan: 

“I flew with China Eastern, and the experience was actually alright! The food was genuinely impressive, and I was surprised by that — they served two proper meals and the portion sizes were good. The staff were also excellent, friendly and attentive the whole time. 

 Entertainment was where things fell short. The selection was sparse, leaning heavily towards Chinese movies, and only one or two Western options really caught my interest. I was glad I have my own pair of headphones because the airline-provided ones weren’t great. 

 The layover in Shanghai was where things got tricky. My initial three-hour layover was cut down to just one hour because of a delay in London, making for a pretty rushed transit. The terminal is huge, and there’s not many signs in English meaning I had trouble finding my gate. And, no WiFi unless you have a local SIM card to get connected. On the flight home, while my layover was longer, it wasn’t necessarily smoother because it was the middle of the night so everything was closed. Without WiFi, I only had my downloaded content to pass the time, and I just had to camp up to sleep in the terminal where I could because there were no lounges open. 

 If I fly through China again, I’ll consider buying an eSIM for my phone, just so I can use data during those long layovers. Otherwise, pack some snacks and make sure you’ve got enough videos or podcasts downloaded on your device to get you through the journey!” 

 Well, it sounds like Shanghai and Guangzhou face similar problems for passengers transiting through China, but it sounds like the food was better with China Eastern and the in-flight entertainment was better with China Southern. Generally, we both experienced the same standard level of service we’d expect when flying with any other long-haul airline.