Chinese Planes

[GiantFan]

Why do many of the planes from China arr/dep at such God awful hours?  Landing fees can't be all that's involved.  They arrive after midnight and depart around 3am.

They leave China late evening and they get back home like 6 in the morning.  I would hate to fly at these times.

When you arrive here, you get to your hotel, get a few hours kip and then off on your daily excursion.  When you leave, I assume you need to check out before the daily tour, go have dinner dinner and go to the airport without any freshening up.  Yuck!

Not my idea of a relaxing holiday.

 

[lopburi3]

China has there own agenda for airline operation - when I first entered in 1979 (there were no international flights from SE Asia) so had to travel from Bangkok to Hong Kong and take train from border (HK was British at the time) to Canton to fly to Peking on domestic flight - if the two main government hotels were not full they would postpone the flight so everyone had to pay for an overnight in Canton and flight would leave the next morning.  Happened to me and from reports it happened often.

[KhunBENQ]

Indeed.

Just looked at Guangzhou - Phuket.

Only nonstop schedule by China Southern.

E.g.:

00:15h - 02:55h (!) inbound

04:10h(!) - 08:35h outbound

 

Not wasting precious daylight time?

Saving overnights (spending the night on airports and in the planes)?

Rushing from the working shift to the airport?

Rushing from the airport to the working shift?

 

Sure not what most would find relaxing...

With the fairly short flight times of 3 to 5 hours one could really wish better (for a price?).

 

 

 

[KhunBENQ]

Weekend in Phuket?

 

Finish work on Friday afternoon, rush to airport.

Arrive Phuket Saturday morning 00:50h.

Sunday night to Phuket airport, depart 01:50h Monday morning, arrive 06:15h.

Off to work

 

One hotel night.

 

[GiantFan]

14 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

China has there own agenda for airline operation - when I first entered in 1979 (there were no international flights from SE Asia) so had to travel from Bangkok to Hong Kong and take train from border (HK was British at the time) to Canton to fly to Peking on domestic flight - if the two main government hotels were not full they would postpone the flight so everyone had to pay for an overnight in Canton and flight would leave the next morning.  Happened to me and from reports it happened often.

And hot water only an hour a day.  Chinese take showers at night, so had to hurry back after dinner.  Then the knock at the door by a lovely lady who forgot her friends room number.  Probably a PLA operative.

[lopburi3]

Just now, GiantFan said:

And hot water only an hour a day.  Chinese take showers at night, so had to hurry back after dinner.  Then the knock at the door by a lovely lady who forgot her friends room number.  Probably a PLA operative.

Actually most of the time they just entered when I first went to China as no hotel rooms had locks on doors - and yes there were some lovely encounters - my entry was not on China Travel list so got special lady welcome at Canton train station with only person with a color sweater I would see in China (black and white only at that time for anyone above child age) who sat talking with me for an extended period waiting for my bus to airport and explained how much she preferred to work in Hong Kong.  Could have been real but I was feeling a lot more attractive than I was.  

[Old Croc]

Possibly getting an extra flight out of their fleet by doing a return trip to a non curfew airport in the early hours.

Many airports have curfews, those that don't get a lot of scheduled flights in the early hours.

 

[DrDave]

Many times, the schedules are determined by hub-style connections and the other inbound flights that are expected to have passengers connecting to the same flights.

 

In the case of direct flights - they're probably just trying to get the highest utilization of their fleet.

An aircraft on the ground doesn't generate any revenue, so they try to squeeze out as many revenue miles as possible from each plane.

[DipStick]

15 hours ago, lopburi3 said:

China has there own agenda for airline operation - when I first entered in 1979 (there were no international flights from SE Asia) so had to travel from Bangkok to Hong Kong and take train from border (HK was British at the time) to Canton to fly to Peking on domestic flight - if the two main government hotels were not full they would postpone the flight so everyone had to pay for an overnight in Canton and flight would leave the next morning.  Happened to me and from reports it happened often.

Ah the memories, the tin shack that was the terminal at Canton, the magnificently serviced Antonov aircraft, seats with no belts and more often than not live animals in the overhead lockers. As I say ........... The memories 

[xylophone]

On 1/23/2017 at 0:19 PM, DipStick said:

Ah the memories, the tin shack that was the terminal at Canton, the magnificently serviced Antonov aircraft, seats with no belts and more often than not live animals in the overhead lockers. As I say ........... The memories 

Ah yes, memories and reminds me of the Nigerian Airways flight on the last leg from Kano to Lagos in the early 70's where they would pile on with chickens, other small animals and the occasional goat!

[lopburi3]

10 minutes ago, xylophone said:

Ah yes, memories and reminds me of the Nigerian Airways flight on the last leg from Kano to Lagos in the early 70's where they would pile on with chickens, other small animals and the occasional goat!

Been there also - in 1967 where check-in was at machine gun point for my flight from Lagos to Kaduna and once boarded aircraft turned around to deposit us back at terminal as the Fokker had no brakes.  Did get another plane later to arrive in Kaduna after midnight to very unhappy folks, and in the case of persons waiting for me a bit tipsy, again malita gunpoint, and looking at my telephoto camera lens as a suspected bomb.  

[xylophone]

10 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

Did get another plane later to arrive in Kaduna after midnight to very unhappy folks, and in the case of persons waiting for me a bit tipsy, again malita gunpoint, and looking at my telephoto camera lens as a suspected bomb.  

Off track I know but had to share this with you. Flew from Lagos to Ghana on way back to the UK but had a 6 hr stopover in Ghana.

 

Saw a crew in the airport bar and one of them got absolutely paralytic and had to be dragged out by his mates. I boarded the plane around midnight and we were held up whilst armed soldiers searched us and the plane many times; we were then ordered off onto the tarmac, searched again and asked to identify our luggage which had been offloaded and this was repeated until we were finally asked to reboard and we were told this was because of a bomb threat (luggage)...all in all about 3 to 4 hours.

 

Then to my amazement the Capt or Co-pilot (never did find out) came out to address us and he was the same guy who was dragged out of the bar hours earlier. I can assure you I didn't manage to sleep a wink on the way back worrying about bombs and drunk pilots!!

[NamKangMan]

"They arrive after midnight and depart around 3am."  - they basically get two full days of their holidays without paying for accommodation for those two days.  

 

Arrive after midnight, and arrange as early check-in as possible the next day, so no accommodation costs for the flight night, and arrange late check-out on their departure day, leaving their luggage at reception, have another full day on Phuket, before heading to the airport for an early morning flight.

 

Not hard for the tour operator to arrange with the hotels, and the cost of the holiday package is cheaper by two nights accommodation.

 

These are the quality tourists Phuket is now attracting.