China Eastern Airlines reliable?
 

Is China Eastern Airlines a reliable airline? How come it's always cheaper than the other airlines on the flight search websites? Is it like Easy Jet airlines that is based in Europe?

If you're looking at the standard supposedly discount Western search engines you have no clue what real prices in China are or indeed even of the existence of most domestic flights. On most domestic routes most flights with most airlines are usually identical in price, and you will not find consistently in reality that China Eastern is cheaper except on international routes where, like other Chinese airlines it sets its prices slightly to undercut the best prices available from its non-Chinese competitors.

Those who fly Chinese airlines frequently draw distinctions between them, but they are much the same, and China Eastern, along with Air China, China Southern, etc. is one of the larger carriers. Some of these are more closely related than they might appear to be. For short haul around China it doesn't really matter which you fly as they experience is much the same and fairly brief. Internationally, unless every penny counts, you might want to choose something else, although these days service on Chinese airlines international flights is little different (no less diabolical) than most North American airlines, for instance, just less familiar in style.

Peter N-H

Take a look at Ctrip.com. We used them to book our internal flights. We flew Shanghai Airlines and as PNH reports, the service was similar, but different to domestic US carriers. There was a separate Ctrip counter in both the Shanghai and Beijing airports.