Anybody travel on intercontinental Air China? Heard some negative things about it. Want to choose a tour and don't know whether or not to choose one that uses Air China.

You may wish to consult www.airlinequality.com to view Air China's rating by passengers.

I have just flown with them and they are excellent----superior in my view to Cathay Pacific.

Hi--- Just returned from R/T Air China (LAX-TPE-BKK), Economy class (coach).
On time fine flights--no problems.
A couple things you might want to know.
They fly 747's---mainly refurbished 400 series.
Some have big TV's, others indiv programable TV's in each seat.
The seating on their planes is 3-4-3, and coach seats start in row 28.
They do not offer seat selection until you get to the airport---with two exceptions: Disabled or Sr Citizen.
Fortunately, we are in the latter category.
If you can get seats pre-assigned, we asked for (all legs), and rec'd row 31B/C (Aisle/middle), as there are no 2 across except for the last row of the plane.
This was close to the front, but afforded a good view of the screen on the legs w/o indivual TV's.
By the way, don't recall if there are other code shares Air China uses, but we got Delta miles on our FF card.
Hope this is helpful.
Enjoy.
Art

Flew only once on AirChina, returning to the States -- was very excited to be upgraded to first class. Unfortunately, extrenely disappointed. Having flown AirJapan/Nippon over to China on business had set my expectations high. Old refurbished plane-the video comprised of the front screen projection way out of focus, only one Chinese movie, seats that reclined (great, don't get me wrong with you're used to travelling coach this makes a world of difference). However, the women in front pushed her seat back to sleep and ended up with her chair squashing my feet, she said she felt that she was sleeping in my lap! I ended up reading most of the way back to the States as that was the most comfortable thing to do. My seat mate got on the plane with his own pillow and eyecovers-refused all food and drink and promptly slept the entire journey--he worked for a travel channel, I would follow his lead next time. 1 1/2 hours before we landed the exercise class was broadcast on the wavy screen with one/two/three repeated over and over as it got louder and louder in Chinese--unless you had earplugs (my seat mate did!) you had no option but to hear it, while the female flight attendance marched around raising all the shades.
Ultimately though, the plane left on time, arrived 10 mins. early and safely and luggage came too--which ultimately is all you can really hope for.

To top it off, united airlines that is the partner and that the travel agent said would give mileage--said this flight didn't quality!!!! Be sure that the airline gives you mileage and that the particular flight is covered no matter that class of service you travel in and no matter what your travel agent tells you. Double check.

We flew Air China SFO-PEK on 23 Mar and PVG-PEK-SFO on 4 April.
The international legs were clean 747-400s with functioning bathrooms, good service and decent Chinese beer and red wine. The seats in Coach were decent (I think a 34" pitch?) and we both got lots of Ambien-induced sleep both directions with no jet lag (we did miss some meals, but the food was not very good so it hardly mattered).
The PVG-PEK flt was due to a schedule change on 1 Apr which discontinued the previous direct PVG-SFO. The 767 was typical and the flight was short.
We have not travelled coach internationally in many years, but these flights were part of a (very inexpensive) high quality China Focus Travel tour and worth the fare.
M

WE're flying Air China from lax next week, and I'm really worried about the no seat asignment thing. How did you get them to preassign seats?

You don't unless you are a senior or disabled. If this is something that you are "very worried" about, it probably would have been better if you had chosen another airlines (and paid substantially more for your flight, I suspect). Best you can do now is get to the airport very very early.

Not a problem inohpos - Louisa has 45 years in the aviation "industry".
M

Finally was able to get through to Air China, and they did give me seat assignments. Actually, now I'm wondering, they gave us row 11, but a previous post says economy started at row 28? I'm confused.

cherikim,
I think the first row in coach was 9 (Ambien fuzzies) on the 747-400s: we were in 11 and 12 each way on the isles.
M

Thanks Mikemo, sounds like we do have good seats then. It's impossible to get anyone to answer the phones at Air China, I wonder how they manage to sell seats to anyone but tour groups! I'm stocking up on the Ambien too, just keep telling myself that if I can get through that flight, the rest of the trip will be totally amazing.