The Fawlty Towers of the air

ICN-SYD-CHC

Between the two of us we've lived in 10 countries, so the experience of flying is not usually surprising...

At Seoul airport the China Eastern check-in people said I couldn't fly as we were transferring at Sydney and I didn't have a visa for Australia, just a UK passport.
'But I'm not leaving the airport!?'
'You still need a visa.'
'But we're also transferring in Shanghai, do I need a Chinese visa?'
'No, but you can visit Shanghai for 24 hours with no visa.'
'But I'm not leaving the airport in China, either!'
'Well ... er ... we'll see what we can do.'

After half an hour ...
'Oh, you don't need a visa if you don't leave Sydney's airport.'
'Thank you, good day.'

On the Shanghai --> Sydney 10 hour leg we were put right next to the toilet. It would've been good on the way back as Olivia spent most of that time throwing up the food they'd fed her.

When we were in Sydney we went through customs as China Eastern wouldn't transfer our luggage, and we had to check out and check in again. Our mistake after 10 hours sat listening to people use the toilet (the overhead tvs only showed infomercials with the volume turned off). Only I didn't have a visa so Olivia sped through the Australians/New Zealanders (NZ passport) queue and I got stuck air side. We had no means of communicating so she picked up our luggage and held on to it. I went to the transfer desk and they tore up my boarding pass for the Sydney -> Christchurch leg as Olivia had our printed schedule so I couldn't prove I had a return flight back from Christchurch.

After several hours waiting Olivia checked in and we met up, showed the transfer guy our schedule and he printed a new boarding pass - luckily my seat hadn't been taken in the meantime. I said 'Thank you, good day'


On the return journey China Eastern, in Shanghai, made us check out of the airport, pick up our luggage, and then check back in again. By that time they only had separate middle seats. We said 'Thank you, good day'. We got to the gate, Olivia went ahead and they wouldn't let me through as both our boarding passes had Olivia's name on. She was called back to the gate and we waited a while until they fixed their mess. When we got on the plane our seats were already taken by people who also had boarding passes with the same seats on. Luckily there were a couple of spare seats at the front of coach, which was nice. We said 'Thank you, good day'.

I would also like to add the complete incompetence and rudeness of the staff on many instances e.g. when checking in there was a line of about 200 people and only one person managing the check ins. Directions were unclear or absent e.g. when trying to check in we were stranded at a "transfers wait here sign" with 60 other people for more than an hour, only to find out from the aggressive attendant that they were unable to help us. After we had finally managed to get checked in they put us on a bus with first class passengers (economy passengers were on another bus) that sped us through only to leave us all stranded waiting behind a long line in the cold, which was strange because when Olivia was trying to hop off the plane one of the air hostesses berated her for not letting a first class passenger go first - the curtain between first and coach was never closed. Staff barely spoke English. They also had a limited supply of arrival cards in English so they handed out many of the English speaking passengers cards in Chinese to fill in.

The list could go on and on. Apart from anything else I was amazed at how incompetent this airline is. And how they managed to turn flying with them into a frustrating and miserable experience.