| @JSW: Yes, I know it is not an official web-site. I was just seeing if "the wisdom of crowds" could give me any advice ;) I found that if I tried repeatedly with Skype, sometimes, I could get thru to +86 21 95808 (othertimes it said the number was invalid). I guess it depends how the call got routed any particular time--it is worth calling multiple times. China Eastern are pretty vague about if you need to reconfirm or not. I believe it is safer to reconfirm with China Eastern. When I called to reconfirm, since I had paper tickets, they said that they could only reconfirm if I gave them the ticket numbers -- this is pretty inflexible, I think. With e-tickets, I believe you need to know the passport number or whatever you use as ID with the e-ticket. When I actually reached Heathrow Airport, I found that the flight had been delayed to the next morning (about 12 hours). So China Eastern arranged for us stay in a hotel nearby in Slough. Hotel staff said that it was the first time that China Eastern had had to have people stay, so I guess it is rare for a flight to be delayed that much (perhaps it is the security surrounding the Olympics that caused the delay). The next morning the flight left at 10:30 without incident. On arrival at Pudong airport, I found that customs now X-ray everyone's baggage, whereas previously they seemed to be pretty much asleep and seemed to do almost nothing. We had to queue up for about 10 minutes for this. I guess this is more Olympics-related security, maybe. |
Traveled to Beijing with China Eastern Airlines