Trip Report: China Southern Economy Class A321 Shanghai PVG - Harbin
A relatively last minute plan, I decided to fly to Harbin in mid-February to catch the last days of the ice festival, before things started to melt.
I went over to Pudong airport after work to catch my flight on China Southern, and I barely made the plane! The gate was in the Satellite terminal, which required getting on a shuttle, then a sprint to the gate.
This 8:20pm flight was labelled “snack service” (小食), so I was surprised to get a hot meal!
There was a choice between shrimp with noodles and beef fried rice. I chose the shrimp, which also came with some radish pickles and a yogurt.
The shrimp was pretty good, coming with a savory sauce of diced carrots and bamboo shoots.
Since I had no time for the lounge, I was actually quite hungry by this point. So I asked the flight attendant if I could also try the beef fried rice, and was obliged. This was quite interesting! It was a peppery sticky rice with ground beef, cabbage, and diced carrots.
Scheduled trip time was a little under 3 hours, and flight time was about 2 and a half hours. We were soon arriving at very cold Harbin - just 8 degrees Fahrenheit!
The airport has a really cool, and smart, feature: changing wardrobes where you can change your clothes if you come from slightly warmer temperatures and need to put on your heavier clothes!
And here we are leaving Harbin airport.
I was rather impressed by China Southern’s service on this short domestic flight. It would become even more impressive in comparison to my return flight on Air China a couple days later, where the flight departure time was even closer to dinner time but the meal was quite insufficient.
