airline of torture

i shall interrupt this train story (which will be finished someday, don't worry) to tell you about the airline of torture: spring airlines. a nice happy sounding name. do not be deceived.

this weekend, i went up to shenyang for a friend's wedding reception, and with some friends who wanted to spend time with other friends. our flight was at 6:40 PM. we arrived at the airport an hour in advance, as we were supposed to. we checked in without any problems, and found our gate. we still had time, so we walked a bit and bought some random food, since we didn't really have time to eat dinner. we went back to the gate and to snack and to wait to board. but when we had returned, the message board had changed to show the flight was delayed. looking outside, there wasn't even a plane sitting out there at the gate. so i asked the people out the counter what time the flight would be. they said 8:20. hmmm. so we have time for dinner. we went to the noodle place near the gate and found a nice place to sit, ordered food (not that good for the price that it was) and ate dinner and played cards. we found a water dispenser since we'd had to drink all of our water before going through security, and we fill up our water bottles. about 7:30 we decided we should go back to the gate. the gate had been changed! so we walked way down towards the other gate the flight had been changed to. we again ask what time, and they say the plane will arrive at 8:15. hmmm. we sit down to wait some more, within view of the message board so we will see if we actually get to board sometime soon. at this point we are getting kind of tired. people are just reading and playing on itouch and not really speaking. we finally board around 9 PM, and take off not long after that, thankfully. we are thirsty, but fall asleep, so don't get any drinks, and it turns out we would have had to pay for them anyway. there were no complimentary drinks or snacks whatsoever. every other time i've flown in china (ok, not that many times, but still) we have been served a *meal* on a flight, even if it is only 2 hours. we arrive in shenyang around 11:30 PM, when we should have arrived around 8:45 PM. yup.

on the way back, we also get to the airport in plenty of time. we check in without incident. we find the gate. no people are at the gate. no airplane is at the gate. this is not a good sign. we wait for all the flights to scroll by to see the status of ours--it does not say it is delayed, and we still have 45 minutes before the flight is supposed to take off. we sit down to wait. people do come to the counter eventually, and we see the airplane arrive, and flight attendants board the plane. we do board the plane about 15 minutes after it was supposed to take off (there are no announcements to inform us of any delay or when we might actually be boarding, before this time). the seats on this particular plane are really really close together. the others were, but these are more so. everyone is settled, they close all the overhead bins. nothing happens. the plane is still sitting at the gate. awhile later, there is an announcement that there will be a delay and they will let us know a time later (yeah...right). we sit at the gate awhile longer. then we back up and taxi a bit, and stop again. we have apparently moved back from the gate only to park so that another plane can pull up to the gate. we wait some more. finally we begin to taxi for real, about 1.25 hours after the plane was supposed to have taken off. and yes, finally we take off. once again, we are served no drinks or snacks of any kind. when there is about 40 minutes of the flight left, we start hearing announcements over the intercom in chinese. i wait for them to be translated, like the other announcements were, but they aren't. then we realize there is a flight attendant at the front of the plane holding up products and doing a sales pitch up there, which she proceeds to do for the next half an hour, over an intercom that is turned up way too loud. another flight attendant walks up and down the aisle, taking people's money and giving them things if they want to buy them. example: a hair dryer. hmmm. finally we land about an hour after we were supposed to and book it to get to the bus on time. we made it. which is a good thing, otherwise we would have had to wait 1.5 hours for what would've been the last bus of the night to get to where we needed to go. but i think i had a headache.

conclusion: spring airlines = airline of torture. let you check in and get to the gate: flight is delayed--wait 2.5 hours. no free food or anything. let you board the airplane: flight is delayed--sit on the tarmac for 1.5 hours. no free drinks allowed while waiting. once you are just starting to be ok with the flight, since you are almost at the destination, begin to sell products over extremely loud intercom, which even headphones could not tune out. in case i should give the benefit of the doubt, maybe it's flying to shenyang, maybe it's not the airline. because the one other time i flew to shenyang, i also sat the tarmac for 1.5 hours waiting for the plane to take off. but they fed us a full meal and drinks. and other people have said similar things about spring airlines. it was the cheapest ticket there was, and it was pretty cheap. amazingly so. so, we saved money. but still...conclusion: airline of torture. be prepared.