Hi all,
Early last year, Oxford Aviation Group set about planning a trip to China. The spirit of this trip was to see as much Chinese aviation heritage, past and present as we could. This meant spending a lot of hours at top airport hotels to get the airliners and business jets, but we also planned to visit as many museums and technical school collections as we could.
The top item on my agenda was to visit the Airshow China held at Zhuhai every two years. That would give us the general and military aviation aspect that seems hard to come by in China. There didn’t seem to be any general aviation fields anywhere near the cities we decided to visit and we decided against going to military bases to spot from outside as we all wanted to be able to go home at the end of our two weeks.
So the trip planning started and was built around an amazing £380 Air China return ticket from Heathrow to Shanghai via Beijing. This would give us flights in Boeing 747-8, 777 and 787 types. We were happy about the 787 as Qatar had let us down on that during our visit to Dubai in 2015. Our other internal flights were to be with Shanghai Airlines, China Eastern Airlines and finally Spring Airlines all of which were booked through Ctrip.com.
All hotels were booked through two of four websites that we looked at, namely Agoda & Ctrip. Expedia and Elong were also constantly checked for price comparison but the former two websites always gave better price options on the hotels if you factored in free cancellation and breakfasts.
At this point I must thank all those people who have been to China
previously and posted information online so as to help others. It helped massively in deciding which hotels to use. None of us wanted to go for the cheap option and potentially miss stuff. Indeed I have personally been in touch with some of these contributors and already thanked them, but I take the opportunity to do it again here – I won’t name you as you know who you are!
So anyhow, our group met up in Abingdon and off we went on the short journey to Heathrow where we logged the following.
4R-ALQ Airbus A330-343X SriLankan Airlines
9K-APD Airbus A330-243 Kuwait Airways
9V-SWU Boeing 777-312ER Singapore Airlines
A4O-DD Airbus A330-343X Oman Air
A6-APH Airbus A380-861 Etihad Airways
A6-EDW Airbus A380-861 Emirates Airline
A6-EES Airbus A380-861 Emirates Airline
A6-EUD Airbus A380-861 Emirates Airline
A7-AEH Airbus A330-302 Qatar Airways
A7-BAI Boeing 777-3DZER Qatar Airways
A7-BCU Boeing 787-8 Qatar Airways
A9C-KC Airbus A330-243 Gulf Air
B-16711 Boeing 777-35EER EVA Air
B-2031 Boeing 777-39LER Air China
B-5962 Airbus A330-243 China Eastern Airlines
B-6113 Airbus A330-243 Air China
B-KQR Boeing 777-367ER Cathay Pacific Airways
B-LIC Boeing 747-467ERF Cathay Pacific Airways
CS-TNT Airbus A320-214 TAP Portugal
D-AIBB Airbus A319-114 Lufthansa
D-AILW Airbus A319-114 Lufthansa
D-AIUH Airbus A320-214 Lufthansa
EI-DSU Airbus A320-216 Alitalia
EI-DTF Airbus A320-216 Alitalia
EI-DTH Airbus A320-216 Alitalia
ET-ATQ Airbus A350-941 Ethiopian Airlines
F-HEPE Airbus A320-214 Air France
HB-IJM Airbus A320-214 Swiss International Air Lines
HL7615 scrape Airbus A380-861 Korean Air
HL8284 Boeing 777-28EER Asiana Airlines
HZ-AK30 Boeing 777-368ER Saudi Arabian Airlines
LN-RGI Boeing 737-86N SAS Scandinavian Airlines
N780AV ** Boeing 787-8 Avianca
OY-JTY Boeing 737-7Q8 Jet Time
OY-KAY Airbus A320-232 SAS Scandinavian Airlines
PT-MUG Boeing 777-32WER LATAM Airlines
SE-RJE Airbus A320-232 SAS Scandinavian Airlines
SP-LRF Boeing 787-8 LOT Polish Airlines
SU-GDY Boeing 737-866 Egypt Air
SX-DNE Airbus A320-232 Aegean Airlines
SX-DVZ Airbus A321-231 Aegean Airlines
T7-MRC Airbus A320-214 Middle East Airlines
TC-JSR Airbus A321-231 Turkish Airlines
TC-JSU Airbus A321-231 Turkish Airlines
VP-BBS Boeing 787-8 Azerbaijan Airlines
VP-BLX Airbus A330-243 Aeroflot-Russian Airlines
VT-ANP Boeing 787-8 Air India
VT-JES Boeing 777-35RER Jet Airways
ZS-SXZ Airbus A330-243 South African Airways
B-6113, Airbus A330-243 of Air China was to be our stead for the long flight to Beijing/Capital………departing as CCA856 after 10pm and arriving at Beijing 10 hours later on Monday 24th.
Regards,
Grant Robinson
Oxford Aviation Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/139252716488773/